Building low-diameter P2P networks

Abstract

In a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, nodes connect into an existing network and participate in providing and availing of services. There is no dichotomy between a central server and distributed clients. Current P2P networks (e.g., Gnutella) are constructed by participants following their own uncoordinated (and often whimsical) protocols; they consequently suffer from frequent network overload and fragmentation into disconnected pieces separated by choke-points with inadequate bandwidth. The authors propose a simple scheme for participants to build P2P networks in a distributed fashion, and prove that it results in connected networks of constant degree and logarithmic diameter. It does so with no global knowledge of all the nodes in the network. In the most common P2P application to date (search), these properties are important.