O-Ring: A Fault Tolerance and Load Balancing Architecture for Peer-to-Peer Systems

O-Ring is a novel architecture that provides fault tolerance and load balancing for peer-to-peer systems. As the number of peers increases, faults become more frequent and fault tolerance becomes important. As the number of users increases, demand becomes more variable and load balancing becomes necessary. In O-Ring, data items are replicated on successive peers around the ring, with an overlap of data items stored at consecutive peers. Each peer holds data items for which it is directly responsible. It also holds backup copies of data items held by the peer preceding it on the ring and the peer following it on the ring. O-Ring allows peers to adjust their loads dynamically, without the overhead of transferring data items and without delay in request processing.