A self-organized P2P network for an efficient and secure content location and download

In this paper, we propose a hybrid and self-organized P2P overlay network. Unstructured networks have easy mechanisms (human readable form) to search for a content, but the location process does not take advantage of the distributed system nature. Conversely, structured networks can efficiently (completely distributed system) locate items, but the searching process is not user friendly. We suggest the usage of a structured network for managing a hierarchical unstructured network, where some peers take the role of SuperPeers periodically. Therefore, although the users perform the search in an unstructured way, the location process is performed in a structured way. Moreover, the network is self-organized dynamically. This self-organized nature gives the network the necessary reliability in front external attacks. Some aspects of the proposed system are evaluated analytically and with simulations. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2007.