A Case for Unstructured Distributed Hash Tables
Krishna P. N. Puttaswamy
Ben Y. Zhao
Tenth IEEE Global Internet Symposium (GI 2007)
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Paper Abstract
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.