Self-Healing Protocols for Connectivity Maintenance in Unstructured Overlays

In this paper, we discuss on the use of self-organizing protocols to improve the reliability of dynamic Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlay networks. Two similar approaches are studied, which are based on local knowledge of the nodes' 2nd neighborhood. The first scheme is a simple protocol requiring interactions among nodes and their direct neighbors. The second scheme adds a check on the Edge Clustering Coefficient (ECC), a local measure that allows determining edges connecting different clusters in the network. The performed simulation assessment evaluates these protocols over uniform networks, clustered networks and scale-free networks. Different failure modes are considered. Results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposal.Comment: The paper has been accepted to the journal Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications. The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12083-015-0384-