Supporting efficient keyword-based file search in peer-to-peer file sharing systems

Abstract

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing has become a popular distributed computing paradigm thanks to abundant computing power of modern desktop workstations and widely available network connectivity. Although P2P file sharing provides a scalable alternative to conventional server-based approaches, providing efficient file search in a large-scale dynamic P2P system remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we propose a set of mechanisms to provide a scalable keyword-based file search in DHT-based P2P systems. Our proposed architecture, called Keyword Fusion, balances unfair storage consumptions at peers, transforms users' queries to contain focused search terms. Through trace-driven simulations, we show that Keyword Fusion can reduce the storage consumption of the top 5% most loaded nodes by 50% and decrease the search traffic by up to 67% even in a modest scenario of combining two keywords. © 2004 IEEE.