Repairing Flocks in Peer-to-Peer Networks

In this paper we consider the problem of reliable and robust data storage in peer-to-peer networks. The approach we follow builds a multi-agents system in which documents are split using a (m,n)-erasure code. Each generated fragment is embedded into an autonomous and mobile agent. This mobility gives them, for example, the ability to choose the network area where they want to be hosted. But this motion may have heavy consequences on the system robustness if the initial fragmentation parameters of a document are inappropriate. As a consequence, we focus on the problem of finding the suitable m and n values to apply to a document given the underlying peer-to-peer network properties.