Abstract. Scientific instruments in fields as diverse as high-energy physics and genomics generate enormous volumes of data that need to be processed and analyzed by geographically dispersed communities. Such scientific collaborations require an efficient data dissemination technique. We analyze recent techniques proposed for peer-to-peer data distribution, select a small set of solutions representative for the various approaches currently proposed, and evaluate them, through simulation, in the context of data dissemination in scientific collaborations. This paper focuses on the performance and scalability of our simulator. Additionally, we include several preliminary recommendations for data optimal dissemination in data-intensive scientific collaborations derived form our preliminary simulation results.