Contention-based performance evaluation of multidimensional range search in peer-to-peer networks

Performance evaluation of peer-to-peer search techniques has hitherto been based on simple performance metrics, such as message hop counts and total network traffic, mostly disregarding the inherently concurrent nature of peer-to-peer networks, where contention may arise. This paper is concerned with quantifying the effects of contention in P2P networks, focusing on networks for multidimensional range search. We evaluate peer-to-peer networks derived from recently proposed works, introducing two novel metrics related to concurrency and contention, namely responsiveness and throughput. Our results highlight the impact of contention on these networks, and demonstrate that some studied networks do not scale in the presence of contention. Also, our results indicate that certain P2P network properties believed to be desirable (e.g. even data distribution or uniform peer access) may not be as critical as previously believed.