A Super-Peer Coordination Scheme for Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Networking Using Mobile Agents

Abstract

Peer-to-Peer(P2P) systems are generally classified into two categories; hybrid and pure P2P. Hybrid systems have a single central index server keeping the details of shared information, so that undesirable effects such as heavy load on that server and lack of fault-tolerance can be caused. Pure P2P causes the other problems such as message flooding and scalability although it shows high degree of fault-tolerance. Recently, mobile agent-based distributed computing has been receiving wide attention for its potential to support disconnected operations, high asynchrony, and thus saving network bandwidth. In this paper, a new scheme of peer coordination is proposed for a decentralized P2P network with self-organizing structure. We deployed mobile agents for incorporating the advantages of usage of mobile agents into our P2P network. Proposed P2P network has both advantages of hybrid and pure P2P. The problems of heavy load on the server and lack of fault-tolerance are improved by using multiple special peers called super-peers. And the problems of pure P2P can be reduced by using mobile agents.