Multi-space distributed hash tables for multiple transport domains

Abstract

The use of consistent hashing to construct a distributed hash table (DHT) has recently gained significant interest from the distributed computing community, particularly because algorithms have been devised which implement a DHT using peer-to-peer (P2P) technology. However a common assumption is that every node that participates in the DHT is within the same transport domain. Some solutions make to this problem make use of an intermediate overlay network which itself can become messy. Other solutions rely on the widespread use of IPv6 or "work-arounds" for the limited IPv4. We propose a solution that uses a multi-space DHT algorithm to manifest a DHT space in each transport domain, with bridge nodes linking DHT spaces between transport domains. The ostensive problem with this solution is to ensure that key requests are evenly distributed over all spaces. We provide a framework to solve this problem and give an example solution for a simple 2-space DHT network.