Hop-value-based query-packet forwarding for pure P2P

In pure peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing applications and protocols using a flooding-based query algorithm, a large number of control packets (query packets) are transmitted on the network to search for target files. This clearly leads to a degradation of communication quality on the network and terminals as the number of users of the application increases. To solve such problems, this paper proposes: (1) a unified framework to describe a wide variety of query algorithms for pure P2P and (2) a new query algorithm based on this framework. Our framework determines the number of destinations for query packets based on the hop value recorded in received query packets. Simulation results revealed that the proposed query algorithm can reduce the overhead in the flooding-based query algorithm and k-random walks without decreasing the success rate of retrieval regardless of the density of target files in the network.