HPOSN: A Novel Online Social Network Model Based on Hybrid P2P

Abstract

Currently, online social networks are experiencing explosive growth, and play important roles in all aspects of lives, such as daily communication, online study and online dating. People's everyday life can't stand away from online social networks. With the advances of online social networks and popularity of intelligent mobile devices, more and more service providers are marketing their own online social network services, which providing competent services and ample functionalities. Nonetheless, almost all the mainstream social networks are based on the centralized servers or distributed server clusters. The whole system functions on the basis of the servers, so users depend excessively on servers. This kind of system architecture has potential single-point or multi-point failures though it can offer superior services to users. Users can't log into the system to obtain social services when the servers run into faults, such as equipment failures, link failures or network attacks. More seriously, ifcentralized databases meet with troubles, physical damages or mistake operations, massive user data perhaps could not be used or even lost. This paper defines the problem as Local Service Fault Partition (LSFP) and proposes a novel social network model called HPOSN which applies thoughts of P2P to solve LSFP and optimizes the centralized social network services. The prototype of HPOSN optimizes the communication overhead to control the flooding problem of P2P according to social relationship. Several simulation experiments with two parameters have been conducted, including the Recovery Time and the Recovery Success Rate. Results indicate that HPOSN can solve LSFP problem in centralized social networks pragmatically. Users in the LSFP area can recovery the social services locally through selforganizing and self-managing when they lose the services from centralized server or distributed server clusters. So HPOSN can improve the stability of social network services and user experiences.