Bootstrapping in Peer-to-Peer Systems

Peer-to-Peer systems have become a substantial element in computer networking. Distributing the load and splitting complex tasks are only some reasons why many developers have come to adopt this technology. However, all of them face a severe problem at the very beginning: setting up an overlay network, such that other clients can easily join it. With an empty peer cache common bootstrapping methods require some manually triggered actions for discovering a peer on the overlay. We therefore introduce an approach for an automated bootstrapping based on DDNS. In this paper we give detailed information about our protocol and document its efficiency and scalability.