7 research outputs found
Storage and Search in Dynamic Peer-to-Peer Networks
We study robust and efficient distributed algorithms for searching, storing,
and maintaining data in dynamic Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks. P2P networks are
highly dynamic networks that experience heavy node churn (i.e., nodes join and
leave the network continuously over time). Our goal is to guarantee, despite
high node churn rate, that a large number of nodes in the network can store,
retrieve, and maintain a large number of data items. Our main contributions are
fast randomized distributed algorithms that guarantee the above with high
probability (whp) even under high adversarial churn:
1. A randomized distributed search algorithm that (whp) guarantees that
searches from as many as nodes ( is the stable network size)
succeed in -rounds despite churn, for
any small constant , per round. We assume that the churn is
controlled by an oblivious adversary (that has complete knowledge and control
of what nodes join and leave and at what time, but is oblivious to the random
choices made by the algorithm).
2. A storage and maintenance algorithm that guarantees (whp) data items can
be efficiently stored (with only copies of each data item)
and maintained in a dynamic P2P network with churn rate up to
per round. Our search algorithm together with our
storage and maintenance algorithm guarantees that as many as nodes
can efficiently store, maintain, and search even under churn per round. Our algorithms require only polylogarithmic in bits to
be processed and sent (per round) by each node.
To the best of our knowledge, our algorithms are the first-known,
fully-distributed storage and search algorithms that provably work under highly
dynamic settings (i.e., high churn rates per step).Comment: to appear at SPAA 201
Exploiting Parallelism in the Design of Peer-to-Peer Overlays
Many peer-to-peer overlay operations are inherently parallel and this parallelism can be exploited by using multi-destination multicast routing, resulting in significant message reduction in the underlying network. We propose criteria for assessing when multicast routing can effectively be used, and compare multi-destination multicast and host group multicast using these criteria. We show that the assumptions underlying the Chuang-Sirbu multicast scaling law are valid in large-scale peer-to-peer overlays, and thus Chuang-Sirbu is suitable for estimating the message reduction when replacing unicast overlay messages with multicast messages. Using simulation, we evaluate message savings in two overlay algorithms when multi-destination multicast routing is used in place of unicast messages. We further describe parallelism in a range of overlay algorithms including multi-hop, variable-hop, load-balancing, random walk, and measurement overlay
Lookup Protocols and Techniques for Anonymity
This dissertation covers two topics of interest for network applications:
lookup protocols, a basic building block for distributed systems, and
ring signatures, a powerful primitive for anonymous communication. In
the first part of this work, we review lookup protocols, distributed
algorithms that allow users to publish a document as well as to look
up a published document that matches a given name. Our first major
contribution is to design Local Minima Search (LMS), a new efficient
lookup protocol for a model in which a node is physically connected to
a few other nodes and may only communicate directly with them. Our
second major contribution is the formulation of a new model in which
we allow an arbitrary number of misbehaving nodes, but we assume a
restriction on their network addresses. We then design a new lookup
protocol for this setting.
In the second part of this dissertation, we present our work on ring
signatures, a variant of digital signatures, which enables a user to
sign a message so that a set of possible signers is identified,
without revealing which member of that set actually generated the
signature. Our first contribution on this topic is new definitions of
security which address attacks not taken into account by previous
work. As our second contribution, we design the first provably secure
ring signature schemes in the standard model
Private and censorship-resistant communication over public networks
Society’s increasing reliance on digital communication networks is creating unprecedented opportunities for wholesale
surveillance and censorship. This thesis investigates the use of public networks such as the Internet to build
robust, private communication systems that can resist monitoring and attacks by powerful adversaries such as national
governments.
We sketch the design of a censorship-resistant communication system based on peer-to-peer Internet overlays in which
the participants only communicate directly with people they know and trust. This ‘friend-to-friend’ approach protects
the participants’ privacy, but it also presents two significant challenges. The first is that, as with any peer-to-peer
overlay, the users of the system must collectively provide the resources necessary for its operation; some users might
prefer to use the system without contributing resources equal to those they consume, and if many users do so, the
system may not be able to survive.
To address this challenge we present a new game theoretic model of the problem of encouraging cooperation between
selfish actors under conditions of scarcity, and develop a strategy for the game that provides rational incentives for
cooperation under a wide range of conditions.
The second challenge is that the structure of a friend-to-friend overlay may reveal the users’ social relationships to
an adversary monitoring the underlying network. To conceal their sensitive relationships from the adversary, the
users must be able to communicate indirectly across the overlay in a way that resists monitoring and attacks by other
participants.
We address this second challenge by developing two new routing protocols that robustly deliver messages across
networks with unknown topologies, without revealing the identities of the communication endpoints to intermediate
nodes or vice versa. The protocols make use of a novel unforgeable acknowledgement mechanism that proves that a
message has been delivered without identifying the source or destination of the message or the path by which it was
delivered. One of the routing protocols is shown to be robust to attacks by malicious participants, while the other
provides rational incentives for selfish participants to cooperate in forwarding messages
Efficient Lookup on Unstructured Topologies
We present LMS, a protocol for efficient lookup on unstructured networks. Our protocol uses a virtual namespace without imposing specific topologies. It is vastly more efficient than existing lookup protocols for unstructured networks, and thus is an attractive alternative for applications in which the topology cannot be structured as a DHT. We presen