FeedTree: Sharing web micronews with peer-to-peer event notification

Abstract

Syndication of micronows, frequently-updated content on the Web, is currently accomplished with RSS feeds and client applications that poll those feeds. However, providers of RSS content have recently become concerned about the escalating bandwidth demand of RSS readers. Current efforts lo address this problem by optimizing the polling behavior of clients sacrifice timeliness without fundamentally improving the scalability of the system. In this paper, we argue for a micronews distribution system called FeedTree, which uses a peer-to-peer overlay network to distribute RSS feed data to subscribers promptly and efficiently. Peers in the network share the bandwidth costs, which reduces the load on the provider, and updated content is delivered to clients as soon as it is available. © Springer-Vorlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.