Patent ID: 7885928

Claim:
A method for distributing a plurality of replicas of a resource entity in a peer-to-peer node network for enhanced quality of service access by a resource entity requestor, comprising: providing a first plurality of replicas of the resource entity in selected nodes of a first plurality of nodes; designating the selected nodes by hashing a resource entity replica identifier to generate a distributed hash table correspondence between the selected nodes and hashed resource entity replica identifiers; requesting by the requester for a requested resource entity from a selected one node, including: communicating a local copy count of the requestor for a number of replicas to the selected one node, estimating an extent of awareness of a current total number N of replicas by observing an awareness of local requests, and, assessing by the selected one node whether the requestor is aware of the current total number N of replicas; and, responding to the request, including: locally assessing a quality of service measure to the request by the selected one node, when the quality of service measure meets a predetermined standard, replicating or removing the resource entity at a non-requesting node to provide a second plurality of replicas of the resource entity in additional or fewer ones of the nodes, respectively, for enhanced distributed access thereto, and, appending a variable number identifier associated with each corresponding replica of the first plurality of replicas after and in response to the replicating or the removing of the resource entity; wherein the variable number identifier is based on a value of the current total number (N) of replicas.