P2P Web searches

prostoalex writes "Researchers at UCLA are looking for easier ways to implement Web searches by using peer-to-peer techniques to decrease the workload. 'Queries need to be passed along only a few links rather than flooded throughout the network, which keeps search-related traffic low,' reports Technology Research News."

Comments

If it's P2P...

[thebudgie]

The searching load on servers might be reduced i suppose. But from my experiences with P2P searches are long and slow. How would this help exactly?

Re:I foresee..

[LostCluster]

Save the server load on the main google server!

Error 404: No such main server found.

Google is such a distributed computing network that when a single computer in a cluster fails, they've discovered that it'd cost them more to go to the broken node and repair it than the vaule of the computing resources they've lost. Google just lets such failed computers sit useless, and waits until there are enough downed computers to justify sending in the repair people.

Besides, P2P services to respond to your Google query would mean that your query would end up in the hands of a dreaded "untrusted third party", and I don't think anybody here wants all of their searches available to their next door neighbor.

Huh?

[Ars-Fartsica]

Aren't searches sent to, and derived by, single search engine domains?

Google, Yahoo etc of course crawl the web at large, but even if you want to throw a peer network at crawling, aren't you mitigating freshness?

What I can see is a DNS-like system for propogating metadata in to the interior of the network, and maybe a caching mechanism as a result...not sure if this is what they mean.

Re:Too many people trying to use p2p

[Bert690]

True, at some point networks and machines will be so congested with various p2p protocals, that everyone will jump back to centralized servers.

If you'd take some time to actually read the article, you'd see that the story is about research that addresses congestion problems with existing p2p methods.

Besides, much if not most traffic from p2p networks is from file downloads, not query routing. Moving files to a centralized server isn't going to reduce that traffic at all. In fact, the bottlenecks that result can make congestion even worse.

Moving files to central servers only seems to help congestion because central servers with anything interesting to download tend to be shut down quickly.

Re:Too many people trying to use p2p

[cbiltcliffe]

I'm sick of all this hype about p2p. Its a good technology but its not like we have to use it for everything. The old ways of doing things still work.

You're right, but consider this:

The entertainment industry is trying very hard to convince the US government that all P2P can be used for is copyright infringement, so it should be banned completely.
Any non-infringing use obviously proves them wrong, no matter how out there it is.

Right now, I think we need as many off-the-wall uses as possible for P2P, even if it's not the most efficient way to accomplish the task.
Calling mass attention to these uses wouldn't hurt, either.

Mmm, buzzwords.

[trawg]

Step 1) Find established technology which is working more or less happily as-is
Step 2) Add the word 'p2p' in front of it.
Step 3) ???
Step 4) Profit

I assume Step 3) is now as simple as "show name of new product with 'p2p' in the subject and explain how its NOT related to pirating movies or music" (to increase investor confidence they're not going to get taken to town by the RIAA/MPAA), then its just sit back and watch the fat investment/grant dollars roll in!