Distributed Segment Tree: Support of Range Query and Cover Query over DHT.

Range query, which is defined as to find all the keys in a certain range over the underlying P2P network, has received a lot of research attentions recently. However, cover query, which is to find all the ranges currently in the system that cover a given key, is rarely touched. In this paper, we first identify that cover query is a highly desired functionality by some popular P2P applications, and then propose distributed segment tree (DST), a layered DHT structure that incorporates the concept of segment tree. Due to the intrinsic capability of segment tree in maintaining the sturcture of ranges, DST is shown to be very efficient for supporting both range query and cover query in a uniform way. It also possesses excellent parallelizability in query operations and can achieve O(1) complexity for moderate query ranges. To balance the load among DHT nodes, we design a downward load stripping mechanism that controls tradeoffs between load and performance. We implemented DST on publicly available OpenDHT service and performed extensive real experiments. All the results and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of DST for several important metrics. 1.