Fast Information Retrieval in a Self–Organising P2P Network

In this paper we present a formal descriptionof PROSA, a P2P resource management system heavilyinspired by social networks. Social networks have beendeeply studied in the last two decades in order to understandhow communities of people arise and grow. It is a widelyknown result that networks of social relationships usuallyevolves to small–worlds, i.e. networks where nodes arestrongly connected to neighbours and separated from allother nodes by a small amount of hops. This work showsthat algorithms implemented into PROSA allow to obtain anefficient small–world P2P network. We also show how takingadvantage of PROSA structure it is possible to effectivelyanswer queries. In particular, the so–called query recallfor PROSA is estimated and compared to that obtained inSETS and GES.