General clusters in peer-to-peer networks

The use of clusters in unstructured peer-to-peer systems such as Gnutella is effective for reducing traffic generated by broadcasts. Introducing semi-structured peer-to-peer systems, this paper first details the modification required for Gnutella nodes to form locality proximate clusters, which groups nodes by the clustering criterion of geographical closeness. It then presents the generic general clusters that supports multiple clustering criteria and unfixed number of clusters. Two clustering topologies are proposed for general clusters, and the characteristics of the topology formation are investigated through simulation. The use of caching in topology formation is also investigated.