Reliable Content Distribution in P2P Networks Based on Peer Groups

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks are highly dynamic systems which are very popular for content distribution in the Internet. A single peer remains in the system for an unpredictable amount of time, and the rate in which peers enter and leave the system, i.e. the churn, is often high. A user that is obtaining content from a selected peer is frequently informed that particular peer is not available anymore, and is asked to select another peer, or will have another peer assigned, often without enough checks to confirm that the content provided by the new peer presents the same quality of the previous peer. In this work we present a strategy based on group communication for transparent and robust content access in P2P networks. Instead of accessing a single peer for obtaining the desired content, a user request is received and processed by a group of peers. This group of peers, called PCG (Peer Content Group) provides reliable content access in sense that even as members of the group crash or leave the system, users continue to receive the content if at least one group member remains fault-free. Each PCG member is capable of independently serving the request. A PCG is transparent to the user, as the group interface is identical to the interface provided by a single peer. A group member is elected to serve each request. A fault monitoring component allows the detection of member crashes. If the peer is serving request crashes, another group member is elected to continue providing the service. The PCG and a P2P file sharing applications were implemented in the JXTA platform. Evaluation results are presented showing the latency of group operations and system components.