Typical protocols for peer-to-peer file sharing over the Internet divide files to be shared into pieces.  New peers strive to obtain a complete collection of pieces from other peers and from a seed.  The speaker will talk about the missing piece syndrome, which examines the ability for the BitTorrent like P2P network to utilize the upload capacity brought by new peers to satisfy their requests of downloading.  The speaker is going to describe how strategies --- like peers dwelling as seeds, peers carrying pieces upon arrival, various piece selection policies, network coding, and file bundling --- confront the missing piece syndrome and thereby affect the stability region.

Ji Zhu received the B.S. degree in automation from Tsinghua University, China, in 2008, and the M.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2010.  He is currently a Ph.D. student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  His Ph.D work focuses on distributed algorithms in computer networks.  His research interests include communication and computer networks, stochastic systems, information theory and distributed computing