Index-server optimization for P2P file sharing in mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we compare two basic approaches towards providing peer-to-peer file-sharing (or more generally, information search) in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANET). The flooding approach broadcasts a query (e.g., to locate a node holding a given file) to all network nodes. The index-server approach adds additional servers (known as index servers) that cache directory information about which nodes have which files. With index servers, a node wishing to locate a file first queries its local index server, which then queries other index servers, as needed. The use of index servers presents the possibility of locating a file index quickly in an index server cache, but requires additional overhead to maintain cache consistency. We compare the performance of the flooding approach to two index-server caching approaches: consistent caching and local caching. We quantify the reduction in search overhead using the index-server scheme rather than flooding in MANET, and study how the optimal number of index servers varies according to network size, query rate, and index generation rate. We compare the flooding scheme and the consistent caching and local caching schemes, for two types of queries: history queries and latest queries. Numerical results show how one can choose between the alternatives of consistent caching and local caching depending on network size, index generation rate and query rate.