Search and Replication in Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Networks Pei Cao Cisco Systems, Inc. (Joint work with Christine Lv, Edith Cohen, Kai Li and Scott Shenker)

Disclaimer Results, statements, opinions in this talk do not represent Cisco in anyway This talk is about technical problems in networking, and does not discuss moral, legal and other issues related to P2P networks and their applications

Outline Brief survey of P2P architectures Evaluation methodologies Search methods Replication strategies and analysis Simulation results

Characteristics of Peer-to-Peer Networks Unregulated overlay network Current application: file swapping Dynamic: nodes join or leave frequently Example systems: –Napster, Gnutella; –Freenet, FreeHaven, MajoNation, Alpine,... –JXTA, Ohaha, … –Chord, CAN, “Past”, “Tapestry”, Oceanstore

Architecture Comparisons Napster: centralized –A central website to hold file directory of all participants; Very efficient –Scales –Problem: Single point of failure Gnutella: decentralized –No central directory; use “flooding w/ TTL” –Very resilient against failure –Problem: Doesn’t scale

Architecture Comparisons Various research projects such as CAN: decentralized, but “structured” –CAN: distributed hash table –“Structure”: all nodes participate in a precise scheme to maintain certain invariants –Extra work when nodes join and leave –Scales very well, but can be fragile

Architecture Comparisons FreeNet: decentralized, but semi-structured –Intended for file storage –Files are stored along a route biased by hints –Queries for files follow a route biased by the same hints –Scales very well –Problem: would it really work? Simulation says yes in most cases, but no proof so far

Our Focus: Gnutella-Style Systems Advantages of Gnutella: –Support more flexible queries Typically, precise “name” search is a small portion of all queries –Simplicity, high resilience against node failures Problems of Gnutella: Scalability –Bottleneck: interrupt rates on individual nodes –Self-limiting network: nodes have to exit to get real work done!

Evaluation Methodologies Simulation based: Network topology Distribution of object popularity Distribution of replication density of objects

Evaluation Methods Network topologies: –Uniform Random Graph (Random) Average and median node degree is 4 –Power-Law Random Graph (PLRG) max node degree: 1746, median: 1, average: 4.46 –Gnutella network snapshot (Gnutella) Oct 2000 snapshot max degree: 136, median: 2, average: 5.5 –Two-dimensional grid (Grid)

Modeling Methods Object popularity distribution p i –Uniform –Zipf-like Object replication density distribution r i –Uniform –Proportional: r i  p i –Square-Root: r i   p i

Evaluation Metrics Overhead: average # of messages per node per query Probability of search success: Pr(success) Delay: # of hops till success

Load on Individual Nodes Why is a node interrupted: –To process a query –To route the query to other nodes –To process duplicated queries sent to it

Duplication in Flooding-Based Searches Duplication increases as TTL increases in flooding Worst case: a node A is interrrupted by N * q * degree(A) messages

Duplications in Various Network Topologies

Relationship between TTL and Search Successes

Problems with Simple TTL- Based Flooding Hard to choose TTL: –For objects that are widely present in the network, small TTLs suffice –For objects that are rare in the network, large TTLs are necessary Number of query messages grow exponentially as TTL grows

Idea #1: Adaptively Adjust TTL “Expanding Ring” –Multiple floods: start with TTL=1; increment TTL by 2 each time until search succeeds Success varies by network topology –For “Random”, 30- to 70- fold reduction in message traffic –For Power-law and Gnutella graphs, only 3- to 9- fold reduction

Limitations of Expanding Ring

Idea #2: Random Walk Simple random walk –takes too long to find anything! Multiple-walker random walk –N agents after each walking T steps visits as many nodes as 1 agent walking N*T steps –When to terminate the search: check back with the query originator once every C steps

Search Traffic Comparison

Search Delay Comparison

Lessons Learnt about Search Methods Adaptive termination Minimize message duplication Small expansion in each step

Flexible Replication In unstructured systems, search success is essentially about coverage: visiting enough nodes to probabilistically find the object => replication density matters Limited node storage => what’s the optimal replication density distribution? –In Gnutella, only nodes who query an object store it => r i  p i –What if we have different replication strategies?

Optimal r i Distribution Goal: minimize  ( p i / r i ), where  r i =R Calculation: –introduce Lagrange multiplier, find r i and that minimize:  ( p i / r i ) + * (  r i - R) => - p i / r i 2 = 0 for all i => r i   p i

Square-Root Distribution General principle: to minimize  ( p i / r i ) under constraint  r i =R, make r i propotional to square root of p i Other application examples: –Bandwidth allocation to minimize expected download times –Server load balancing to minimize expected request latency

Achieving Square-Root Distribution Suggestions from some heuristics –Store an object at a number of nodes that is proportional to the number of node visited in order to find the object –Each node uses random replacement Two implementations: –Path replication: store the object along the path of a successful “walk” –Random replication: store the object randomly among nodes visited by the agents

Evaluation of Replication Methods Metrics –Overall message traffic –Search delay Dynamic simulation –Assume Zipf-like object query probability –5 query/sec Poisson arrival –Results are during 5000sec-9000sec

Distribution of r i

Total Search Message Comparison Observation: path replication is slightly inferior to random replication

Search Delay Comparison

Summary Multi-walker random walk scales much better than flooding –It won’t scale as perfectly as structured network, but current unstructured network can be improved significantly Square-root replication distribution is desirable and can be achieved via path replication