Robust Super-Peer-Based P2P File-Sharing Systems

This paper presents an efficient approach for improving file availability in super-peer-based peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing systems. In the super-peer-based P2P file-sharing system, peers are organized into multiple groups. In each group, there is a special peer called super-peer to serve the regular peers within the same group. With this property, the proposed approach utilizes the super-peer to tolerate the departure (failure) of a regular peer in order to protect shared files. Unlike traditional replication-based approaches, the proposed approach keeps track of the file queries in the super-peer to support fault tolerance. The cost of tracking the file queries is much smaller than the cost of replicating the file contents in advance. Furthermore, the proposed approach uses a logical connection technique to consider the departure (failure) of the super-peer. Finally, simulation experiments are performed to quantify the performance and overhead of the proposed approach.