Approaching neighbor proximity and load balance for range query in P2P networks

We present a platform for building a range-queriable system. A distinguishing characteristic of the platform is that objects are not bound to any particular node. Rather, they can be freely moved between neighboring nodes to balance load as long as some ordering between objects in different nodes is respected. Decoupling the link between nodes and objects allows the overlay network to be constructed independently of object placement, focusing only on its own concerns, e.g. proximity and balanced load in routing. The main focus then is to present several heuristics for proximity-aware node joining to reduce communication costs in the platform. These heuristics are based on a novel process called hierarchical neighborhood search, which utilizes the overlay links to provide incoming nodes an overview of the network topology, thereby to guide them to find their neighborhood in the overlay. The experimental results show that some of the heuristics are very effective; they can reduce as much as 80% of the communication costs for neighboring nodes, and 40% overall.