A Case for Unstructured Distributed Hash Tables

Structured peer-to-peer overlays support compelling applications such as large-scale file systems and distributed backup using the distributed hash table (DHT) interface. While unstructured file-sharing systems continue to flourish, wide adoption of structured applications has been elusive. We explore an alternative path to deployment of these applications by asking the question, can structured applications be run on top of unstructured overlays? We build an unstructured distributed hash table (UDHT) on top of state of the art search and topology management mechanisms, and evaluate whether it can sufficiently emulate properties of DHTs to support structured applications.