Text-based P2P content search using a hierarchical architecture

As a scalable alternative to traditional server-based architecture, peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has become a popular distributed computing paradigm. However, efficient content search is absent, which hinders the wider deployment of the peer-to-peer systems. Earlier peer-to-peer systems such as Napster and Gnutella suffer from unscalability. Structured peer-to-peer networks achieve good scalability and high reliability, and yet they can only support a single-key based lookup instead of content search by means of DHTs (Distributed Hash Tables). In this paper, we propose a text-based peer-to-peer content search solution, which uses a hierarchical architecture. The heterogeneity of the popularity of terms both in documents and queries and the heterogeneity of hosts are both examined herein. There some techniques are employed to cope with the troubles arising from these heterogeneities. The experimental results show that the solution is feasible and efficient.