Patent ID: 7478120

Claim:
A system for providing a peer indexing service, comprising: a peer graph formed by assigning published identifiers to each of one or more peer nodes that each map to network addresses and defining a signed number space over the peer graph based on the published identifiers; a peer name service to determine a closest peer node given a key by maintaining data identifying other peer nodes in the peer graph; and a storing peer node in the peer graph to maintain index information identifying the key and an associated value stored as a pair, comprising: a local indexing database maintaining further key and value pairs; a peer indexing database comprising a plurality of hierarchically structured levels as a factor of the number space size, comprising: a level group identifier at a level of the peer indexing database and determined as a function of the published identifier of the storing peer node, the level and the number space size factor; a hash function to hash the key as a function of the initial level group identifier and the number space size factor to identify a closest peer node sharing the initial level group identifier; and a peer index cache transiently maintaining key and value pairs.