  Recent studies have suggested that the stability of peer-to-peer networks may
rely on persistent peers, who dwell on the network after they obtain the entire
file. In the absence of such peers, one piece becomes extremely rare in the
network, which leads to instability. Technological developments, however, are
poised to reduce the incidence of persistent peers, giving rise to a need for a
protocol that guarantees stability with non-persistent peers. We propose a
novel peer-to-peer protocol, the group suppression protocol, to ensure the
stability of peer-to-peer networks under the scenario that all the peers adopt
non-persistent behavior. Using a suitable Lyapunov potential function, the
group suppression protocol is proven to be stable when the file is broken into
two pieces, and detailed experiments demonstrate the stability of the protocol
for arbitrary number of pieces. We define and simulate a decentralized version
of this protocol for practical applications. Straightforward incorporation of
the group suppression protocol into BitTorrent while retaining most of
BitTorrent's core mechanisms is also presented. Subsequent simulations show
that under certain assumptions, BitTorrent with the official protocol cannot
escape from the missing piece syndrome, but BitTorrent with group suppression
does.
