Modeling Random Walk Search Algorithms in Unstructured P2P Networks with Social Information

Random walk (RW) has been widely used as a strategy for searching in peer-to-peer networks. The boom of social network applications introduces new impact to the classical algorithms on the Internet. In this paper, we model the random walk algorithm in peer-to-peer networks when social information is available. We define the social relationship between two nodes as the knowledge about the resources the other node possesses. We mathematically show that the social information can benefit the searching by extending the existing random walk search model.