Abstract:
A supervised peer-to-peer system is a system in which the overlay network is formed by a supervisor, but all other activities can be performed on a peer-to-peer basis without involving the supervisor. It can be seen as being between server-based systems and pure peer-to-peer systems. The supervisor only has to store a constant amount of information about the system at any time and only needs to send a small constant number of messages to integrate or remove a peer in a constant amount of time. Therefore it shares the benefits of server-based and pure peer-to-peer systems without inheriting their disadvantages.