7. Distributed Hash Tables

Abstract

In the last few years, an increasing number of massively distributed systems with millions of participants has emerged within very short time frames. Applications, such as instant messaging, file-sharing, and content distribution have attracted countless numbers of users. For example, Skype gained more than 2.5 millions of users within twelve months, and more than 50% of Internet traffic is originated by BitTorrent. These very large and still rapidly growing systems attest to a new era for the design and deployment of distributed systems [52]. In particular, they reflect what the major challenges are today for designing and implementing distributed systems: scalability, flexibility, and instant deployment.