A distributed quadtree index for peer-to-peer settings

We describe a distributed quadtree index for enabling more powerful access on complex data over P2P networks. It is based on the Chord method. Methods such as Chord have been gaining usage in P2P settings to facilitate exact-match queries. The Chord method maps both the data keys and peer addresses. Our work can be applied to higher dimensions, to various data types, i.e., other than spatial data, and to different types of quadtrees. Finally, we can use other key-based methods than the Chord method as our base P2P routing protocol and index scale well. The index also benefits from the underlying fault-tolerant hashing-based methods by achieving a nice load distribution among many peers. We can seamlessly execute a single query on multiple branches of the index hosted by a dynamic set of peers.