A Markov Model for the EpiChord Peer-to-Peer Overlay in an XCAST enabled Network

Structured peer to peer (P2P) overlay networks are becoming increasingly popular. Multi-hop systems achieve a successful lookup in O(log N) hops, whereas one-hop systems approach O(1) hops. Both approaches, but especially one-hop overlays suffer from a high number of identical messages being sent to a number of nodes on the overlay. Previous work showed that P2P networks benefit from the integration of the overlay network with the underlay network in which multi-destination multicast routing is available. This allows combining identical messages from the same source into joint multi-destination multicast messages to significantly reduce the number of messages. Our experimentation has centered around the one-hop EpiChord overlay. Here the problem is described using a Markov Model for more advanced analysis. The Markov Model is believed to be novel in two aspects: it is the first to investigate one-hop overlays and it is the first to study the performance of multi-destination multicast including the consideration of retransmissions of requests.