Ad hoc, self-supervising peer-to-peer search networks

Abstract

Peer-to-peer search networks are a popular and widely deployed means of searching massively distributed digital object repositories. Unfortunately, as such networks grow, they place an increasingly overwhelming load on some or all of the participating nodes. We examine how to reduce the load on nodes by allowing them to self-organize into a relatively efficient network, and then self-tune to make the network even more efficient. Unlike previously studied architectures, our ``ad hoc, self-supervising'' networks avoid restrictions on who a node can connect to or what information can be exchanged. This makes the network topology quite flexible and tuneable. Our results indicate that our ad hoc networks are more efficient than popular supernode topologies for several important scenarios.