Abstract—Unstructured peer-to-peer networks can be extremely flexible, but, because of size, complexity, and high variability in peers’ capacity and reliability, it is a continuing challenge to build peer-to-peer systems that are resilient to failure and effectively manage their available resources. We have drawn inspiration from the sophisticated, robust, root-like structures of fungal hyphae to design Myconet, an approach to superpeer overlay construction, which models regular peers as biomass, and superpeers as hyphae that attract and concentrate bio-mass, while maintaining strong inter-connections with one another. Simulations of the Myconet peer-to-peer protocol show promising results in terms of network stabilization, response to catastrophic failure, capacity utilization, and proportion of peers to superpeers, when compared to other unstructured approaches.
Paul L. Snyder, Rachel Greenstadt, Giuseppe Valett