A resource exchange architecture for peer-to-peer file sharing applications

A peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing network provides a resource sharing platform for Internet users. To increase higher-degree resource sharing, heterogeneous P2P file sharing networks need a way to collaborate and communicate with each other. Based on the approach of interconnecting heterogeneous P2P file sharing networks, users on one P2P file sharing network can share resources and search data with other P2P file sharing networks. The main objective of our work is to enable connectivity and universal access among heterogeneous P2P file sharing networks. A novel architecture for P2P file sharing network interconnection called Shoran is proposed to serve peers' requests and route peers' requests to other P2P file sharing networks. Shoran provides (i) a message routing mechanism to route query messages among different P2P file sharing networks and (ii) a uniform message format that can ease the message exchange among heterogeneous P2P file sharing networks.