Look-Ahead Routing Reduces Wrong Turns in Freenet-Style Peer-to-Peer Systems

Peer-to-Peer protocols and applications have drawn much attention. Freenet is a ground-breaking Peer-to-Peer system that protects the anonymity of information producers, consumers, and holders. However, it has been reported that Freenet has a "poor worst-case performance, because a few bad routing choices can throw a request completely off track". In this paper, we design and test look-ahead routing that reduces wrong turns and thus reduces the pathlength of data transfers. Each node checks with all of its immediate neighbors before continuing with the depth-first search. Results show a change in network traffic and a reduction in pathlength of up to 91% for 1-lookahead.