An optimised geographically-aware overlay network

The mismatch between current peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay structures and the underlying network topology causes high end-to-end latency and inefficient network resource usage. This paper presents a self-organising overlay network that closely reflects the underlying network topology by using the basic idea of a node locating scheme called geographical longest prefix matching (Geo-LPM) [2004]. Geo-LPM combines IP prefixes and a network metric measurement to cluster nodes efficiently. We optimise Geo-LPM to adapt to different geographical locations so that nodes in the same clusters often belong to the same physical network. We propose to implement Geo-LPM in a distributed fashion. As a result, the overlays utilise the underlying network resources more efficiently and reduce the delay from end-to-end. The system is self-organising, distributed, and decentralised with low overhead.