GRACE: A Gradient Distance-Based Peer-to-Peer Network Supporting Efficient Content-Based Retrieval

Beyond the simple file name-based search supported in peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing networks, content-based search aims to precisely locate the files containing the desired contents. Several existing P2P systems based on structured overlays provide content-based search by indexing shared contents to numeric keys. However, these systems are usually costly when publishing and maintaining the index of contents in dynamic network churn. In this paper, we propose a novel P2P network, GRACE, which probably constructs connections among peers according to the gradient distance of their shared contents. GRACE can achieve high efficiency of the content-based search while gaining a significantly lower maintenance cost than those of previous efforts.