ISPRP: a message-efficient protocol for initializing structured P2P networks

Most research activities in the field of peer-to-peer (P2P) computing are concerned with routing in virtualized overlay networks. These overlays generally assume node connectivity to be provided by an underlying network-layer routing protocol. This duplication of functionality can give rise to severe inefficiencies. In contrast, we suggest a cross-layer approach where the P2P overlay network also provides the required network-layer routing functionality by itself. Especially in sensor networks, where special attention has to be paid to the nodes' limited capabilities, this can greatly help in reducing the message overhead. In this paper, we present a key building block for such a protocol, the iterative successor pointer rewiring protocol (ISPRP), which efficiently initializes a P2P routing network among a freshly deployed set of nodes having but link-layer connectivity. ISPRP works in a fully self-organizing way and issues only a small per-node amount of messages by keeping interactions between nodes as local as possible.