P2P-XBone: A Virtual Network Support for Peer-to-Peer Systems

An architecture to deploy virtual IP networks with P2P-like dynamic topology management is described. Existing virtual IP network deployment mechanisms do not allow for dynamic topology adaptation and fault-tolerance since provisioning of IP tunnels is performed only once when a virtual network is deployed. We propose a P2P-XBone, in which a P2P protocol such as DHT drives the topology and the routing table of a virtual IP network consistent with its neighbor node state. We describe how to extend both the existing X-Bone system and P2P protocols to achieve interworking between them. The P2P-XBone not only provides P2P’s characteristics such as self-organization, fault-tolerance and content-based routing to virtual IP networks but also provides higher forwarding performance and simpler implementation to P2P systems due to the availability of existing network services. We also show several evaluation results on the overhead of P2P-driven provisioning and on forwarding performance.