A Hierarchically Differential P2P Storage Architecture

Abstract

Availability is one of the most important properties of a storage system. However, it is very difficult to guarantee availability in P2P storage system because of peer churn. This paper argues that it is unfeasible to provide the same availability level to all peers, so it presents a novel P2P storage architecture which builds on the basis of hierarchical management and differentiated service. This architecture has two important characters: first it uses a hierarchical organization according to peers’ character instead of organization as a whole; second, it provides different availability according to peer’s contribution instead of an unbiased service. This not only simplifies the organization of large-scale peers, but also provides good incentive mechanism. In this paper, we firstly presents a more precise peer behavior model, and then propose three peer organization strategies and examine their efficiency on different hierarchy in order to study their applicable scopes. Finally, we summarize the strategies of keeping availability in different hierarchies.