Kademlia: A Peer-to-Peer Information System Basedonthe XORMetric

Abstract

We describe a peer-to-peer distributed hash table with provable consistency and performance in a fault-prone environment. Our system routes queries and locates nodes using a novel XOR-based metric topology that simplifies the algorithm and facilitates our proof. The topology has the property that every message exchanged conveys or reinforces useful contact information. The system exploits this information to send parallel, asynchronous query messages that tolerate node failures without imposing timeout delays on users.