DECENTRALIZED STRUCTURED PEER-TO-PEER NETWORK AND LOAD BALANCING METHODS THEREOF

A load balancing method for searching a key of a search peer in a structured peer-to-peer network. The structured peer-to-peer network has indexes of a key shared sequentially among peers in different zones, each peer sharing the key having a same modulo identity and a counter value. The loading balancing method includes hashing a keyword to get the key, wherein the keyword is obtained from a query of the search peer, finding a target peer based on the key, obtaining the counter value from the target peer, wherein the counter value indicates number of zones that have shared the indexes of the same key, determining the shared peers in the zones according to the counter value and the modulo identity, sending a search message to the peers, and receiving answers from the shared peers. The action of finding the target peer is implemented using a lookup procedure.