Finger Forwarding Scheme to Reduce Lookup Cost in Structured P2P Networks

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks are distributed systems where each user shares his resources and cooperates with other users. These networks are designed over IP-based infrastructure. The resources of each user in these networks are shared in a distributed way on a trust based mechanism. P2P networks have some unique characteristics like scalability and cost efficiency, which separate these networks from other distributed networks. These networks are mainly used for resource sharing. However, resource searching in this type of networks is not centrally controlled in nature. Further poor search scalability is another limitation of these networks. Chord like or chord-based protocols used in the search operations in P2P networks utilize a finger table to shorten the query search length. We exploit the finger forwarding mechanism in our proposed scheme which further reduces the resource’s search path length. We propose a last finger search table in addition to finger table to enhance the file lookup performance in the structured P2P networks. The proposed scheme reduces the lookup path and increases search efficiency as compared to the existing chord and binary search routing equivalent schemes.