Distributed semantic overlay networks

Semantic Overlay Networks (SONs) have been recently proposed as a way to organize content in peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. The main objective is to discover peers with similar content and then form thematically focused peer groups. Efficient content retrieval can be performed by having queries selectively forwarded only to relevant groups of peers to the query. As a result, less peers need to be contacted, in order to answer a query. In this context, the challenge is to generate SONs in a decentralized and distributed manner, as the centralized assembly of global information is not feasible. Different approaches for exploiting the generated SONs for content retrieval have been proposed in the literature, which are examined in this chapter, with a particular focus on SON interconnections for efficient search. Several applications, such as P2P document and image retrieval, can be deployed over generated SONs, motivating the need for distributed and truly scalable SON creation. Therefore, recently several research papers focus on SONs as stated in our comprehensive overview of related work in the field of semantic overlay networks. A classification of existing algorithms according to a set of qualitative criteria is also provided. In spite of the rich existing work in the field of SONs, several challenges have not been efficiently addressed yet, therefore, future promising research directions are pointed out and discussed at the end of this chapter.