Title and Abstract

Title: Improving Scalability in Loosely Structured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Systems
Adviser: Dr. Cedric Angelo M. Festin

Abstract: The successes of early systems such as Napster and Gnutella have shown that peer-to-peer (P2P) can be as powerful as the client-server model in terms of user roles. Napster and Gnutella enable users to share files in an end-to-end manner. Aside from sharing files, P2P is used for instant messaging and distributed computing. Although P2P has been increasingly used, it has problems with scalability. Unstructured, structured, and loosely structured frameworks have been applied to P2P systems with varying success to improve scalability for file sharing in the Internet. We propose to use an approach in unstructured systems and apply it to loosely structured systems. This involves control and topology adaptation used in unstructured systems in controlling the arrival and departure of messages due to querying and redirecting the data from one node to another. The redirection will be enhanced with replication. Anthill, a Java- based testbed built for the study, design and analysis of P2P systems, will be used in this research. The behavior of the proposed system will be analyzed through Anthill's simulation tools.

My abstract can also be seen here. This piece of information was lucky enough to be awarded fourth place at the 1st Computer Science Graduate Research Abstract Competition. More information about the contest can be seen at the Asian Java Competency Program 2003 Accomplishment Report.