Patent ID: 7231463

Claim:
An apparatus of comprising: a cache of a current peer in a current ring at a current level to store information of ring peers within the current ring, the current ring being part of an hierarchical ring structure of peer-to-peer (P2P) nodes, the hierarchical ring structure having at least one of a lower level and an upper level; a peer locator coupled to the cache to locate a target peer in the cache in response to a request to search for the target peer; and a peer interface coupled to the peer locator to interface to at least one of a first lower peer in a first lower ring at the lower level and a first upper peer in a first upper ring at the upper level, the peer interface to forward the request to search for the target peer to at least one of the first lower peer and the first upper peer when the target peer is not located in the cache; wherein the peer interface comprises: a lower interface to interface to at least one of the first lower peer and a second lower peer in a second lower ring at the lower level, the lower interface to forward the request to at least one of the first and second lower peers to search for the target peer when the target peer is not located in the cache; and an upper interface to interface to at least one of the first upper peer and a second upper peer in a second upper ring at the upper level, the upper interface to forward the request to at least one of the first and second upper peers to search for the target peer when the target peer is not located in the cache.