Adapting publish/subscribe middleware to achieve Gnutella-like functionality

Abstract : Gnutella represents a new wave of peer-to-peer applications providing distributed discovery and sharing of resources across the Internet. Gnutella is distinguished by its support for anonymity and by its decentralized architecture. The current Gnutella architecture and protocol have numerous flaws with respect to efficiency, anonymity, and vulnerability to malicious actions. An alternative design is described that provides Gnutella-like functionality but removes or mitigates many of Cautella's flaws. This design, referred to as Query/Advertise (Q/A) is based upon a scalable publish/subscribe middleware system called Sienab. A prototype implementation of Q/A is described. The relative benefits of this approach are discussed, and a number of open research problems ore identified with respect to Q/A systems.