Dynamic addressing in transient networks

Abstract

Methods, systems, and computer program products are disclosed for, in one aspect, persisting identifiers and relationships in a transient peer-to-peer networking environment where communities have ad hoc participants. Persistent identifiers are defined for nodes, allowing nodes to be identified across sessions and invocations, even though they re-enter the network with a different network address. Paths taken by content resources as they traverse the network (e.g. which nodes forwarded the content) are persisted, along with reputation information about nodes (e.g. indicating how successful they are at answering queries from peers). Trust relationships can be derived using the persisted information. A tiered broadcast strategy is defined for reducing the number of messages exchanged. Other aspects are also disclosed.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to computer networks, and more particularly to methods, systems and computer program products for use in transient networking environments. Background technique [0002] In a peer-to-peer (or P2P) network, each communicating node has a networking program that allows the node to initiate communication with another node that has the program. Because the network is decentralized, where each node has the same status (for P2P exchange purposes), these nodes are considered "peer nodes". P2P networks promise to be more efficient networks where resources such as central processing unit (CPU) cycles, memory, and storage devices are not wasted. These networks are ad hoc because nodes can join and leave the network at will. Thus, P2P networks can be defined as "transient" networks. [0003] Existing P2P programs provide facilities for dynamically querying and discovering peer nodes. However, the prior art has several disadvantage...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, because of the limitations described above, existing P2P networks are attributable to consumers and "free" markets, and are not well suited for high-volume commerce (such as e-commerce or business-to-business transactions)

(As mentioned above, existing P2P implementations are not well suited for secure transactions within transient communities, which is generally critical for e-commerce)

[0007] Additionally, existing P2P systems cannot be managed (unmanage) and are isomorphic, making them unsuitable for implementing P2P within a large robust IT architecture where many different types of services must be able to manage way of interoperability

Images