Evaluating Peer-to-Peer Networking for Information Retrieval within the Context of Meta-searching

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has shown an unexpected growth and development during the recent years. P2P networking is being applied from B2B enterprise solutions to more simple, every-day file-sharing applications like Gnutella clients. In this paper we are investigating the use of the Gnutella P2P protocol for Information Retrieval by means of building and evaluating a general-purpose Web meta-search engine. A similar project, Infrasearch, existed in the past only to demonstrate the usefulness of P2P computing beyond just file-sharing. In this work, a Java-based Gnutella enabled meta-search engine has been developed and used in order to evaluate the suitability and usefulness of P2P networking in the aforementioned context. Our conclusions concerning time efficiency in different networking topologies are presented. Finally, limitations of this approach as well as future research areas and issues on the subject are discussed.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ECIR
• Authors: Iraklis A. Klampanos, James J. Barnes, Joemon M. Jose
• Keywords: ECIR 2003, Gnutella P2P Protocol, Information Technology, Meta-search Engine, P2P Networking