Structured Peer-to-Peer Control Plane

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems have witnessed an explosive growth in popularity due to their desirable characteristics (robustness, scalability, availability). In this paper, we present an approach to bring these characteristics into the control plane of IP networks, which mainly relies on signaling protocols such as SIP to setup multimedia and instant messaging sessions. We present a structured P2P control plane based on modifications to the original Chord P2P topology, resulting in a hierarchical overlay of SIP peers that replaces traditional client-server paradigms in control plane signaling protocols. Implementations were used to study the performance of the proposed structured P2P control plane, and its suitability for use in IP networks.