Charge-based flooding algorithm for looking up multimedia objects in peer-to-peer overlay networks

Various types of multimedia objects are distributed to peer computers (peers) in peer-to-peer (P2P) overlay networks. An application has to find target peers which can support enough quality of service (QoS) of target multimedia objects. We discuss acquaintance relations of peers with respect to what objects each peer holds, is allowed to manipulate, and can grant access rights on. We discuss a charge-based flooding (CBF) algorithm to find target peers based on charge and acquaintance concepts so that areas in P2P overlay networks where target peers are expected to exist are more deeply searched. We evaluate the CBF algorithm compared with a traditional flooding algorithm in terms of the number of messages transmitted in networks.