Enhancing P2P File-Sharing with an Internet-Scale Query Processor

In this paper, we address the problem of designing a scalable, accurate query processor for peer-to-peer filesharing and similar distributed keyword search systems. Using a globally-distributed monitoring infrastructure, we perform an extensive study of the Gnutella filesharing network, characterizing its topology, data and query workloads. We observe that Gnutella's query processing approach performs well for popular content, but quite poorly for rare items with few replicas. We then consider an alternate approach based on Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs). We describe our implementation of PIERSearch, a DHT-based system, and propose a hybrid system where Gnutella is used to locate popular items, and PIERSearch for handling rare items. We develop an analytical model of the two approaches, and use it in concert with our Gnutella traces to study the tradeoff between query recall and system overhead of the hybrid system. We evaluate a variety of localized schemes for identifying items that are rare and worth handling via the DHT. Lastly, we show in a live deployment on fifty nodes on two continents that it nicely complements Gnutella in its ability to handle rare items.