A hybrid P2P overlay network for high efficient search

A core area of peer-to-peer (P2P) research is the overlay topology of the network. There are two main types of overlay topologies: structured and unstructured. The unstructured networks have excessive lookup costs, while the structured networks have many restraints between the shared data placement and topology characteristics of P2P networks. Hybrid peer-to-peer (P2P) networks that construct overlay topology structured among several super-peers who have great potential in that they can give the benefits such as search efficiency, latency and network traffic, and organize normal peers unstructured, can combine the advantages of structured and unstructured overlay networks. In this paper, a hybrid P2P overlay topology is designed. The major goal of the design is to enhance the efficiency of P2P search. To do so, the proposed hybrid P2P overlay consists of an unstructured overlay and a structured overlay based on tree and ring which can facilitate reliable and efficient message dissemination for search. Experimental results show that compared to the unstructured P2P overlay topology, the hybrid topology proposed here can perform much better in success rate and message overhead, especially for rare resources.