Patent ID: 7558789

Claim:
In a method for searching a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system of a plurality of server computers, wherein a search query is routed to the server computers for comparing query terms to a descriptor of each of a plurality of server content files in one or more of the server computers and returning as search results a descriptor of each of matching server content files, and wherein the descriptor includes at least one metadata term and a key, the improvement comprising: automatically searching for a matching server content file of another of the server computers according to: T<[N f N q /( N r +1)]− N p T where T is a user-defined threshold, N f is a number of content files available for sharing, N q is a number of search queries received, N r is a number of responses returned in response to received search queries, and N p is the number of probe queries performed, and expanding a first descriptor of a content file of one of the server computers using a second descriptor of the matching server content file of another of the server computers.