Assigning identifications to nodes in unstructured peer-to-peer networks: A novel approach to improving search efficiency

The decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing systems organize nodes into structured or unstructured networks. The advantages of the unstructured P2P systems are that they have lower maintenance overhead and can better adapt to node heterogeneity as well as network dynamics. However, the search process in unstructured systems is not as efficient as in structured P2P systems because the same search message may go through a node multiple times. To facilitate the complex search and improve the search efficiency, we propose a novel approach of assigning identifications to nodes in an unstructured system. Our method can prevent a node from receiving duplicate search messages and retain the low maintenance overhead for the system. The performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve the search efficiency of unstructured P2P systems while keeping the maintenance overhead at a comparable or even lower level, compared with the traditional unstructured systems.