CSR-PDOS: A Scalable and Self-Organizing System Architecture for Fast and Efficient Information Retrieval in Large-Scale Decentralized Networks

去中心化网络有两个主要优势：没有单点故障，没有容量限制。节点越多，网络为用户带来的累积计算能力和内容的潜在增益就越大。然而，随着时间的推移，这些分布式资源的数量会急剧增长。因此，一个重要但具有挑战性的问题是，如何有效地管理资源，并能够在需要时在节点成员频繁变化的高度动态网络中快速找到它们。许多作品试图解决这个问题，但只是部分。如果构建在一起，它们可以提供一组对用户有用的服务。不幸的是，这样的组合几乎是不可行的，因为大多数这些技术在系统架构设计上根本不同。该项目开发了一个统一的系统基础设施，可扩展、自组织，为分散网络用户提供一套全面、快速、准确、高效的信息检索服务。该基础架构包含五个组件：(1)通信，(2)索引，(3)搜索，(4)排序/聚合，以及(5)安全性。预期的结果包括具有这些组件的内置技术的基础设施的软件实现。开发成果将通过网络、研讨会、出版物和工业合作传播。该教育计划旨在显著提高学生在本科和研究生阶段的知识水平，并为他们未来的专业努力做好准备。本项目适用于任何部署在科学、商业、国土安全等领域的大规模分布式信息共享网络。

Decentralized networks offer two main advantages: no single point of failure and no capacity limitation. The more nodes added, the more potential gain in accumulative computing power and contents that the network can bring to the users. The amount of these distributed resources, however, grows tremendously over time. As such, an important problem, yet challenging, is how to manage the resources efficiently and be able to find them quickly when necessary in a network that is highly dynamic with frequent node membership changes. Many works attempt to address this problem, but only partially. If built together, they could provide a good set of services useful for the users. Unfortunately, such a combination is hardly feasible as most of these techniques differ fundamentally in system architectural design. This project develops a unified system infrastructure, that is scalable, self-organizing, and facilitates a comprehensive set of fast, accurate, and efficient information retrieval services for the users of decentralized networks. This infrastructure contains five components: (1) communication, (2) indexing, (3) search, (4) ranking/aggregation, and (5) security. The expected outcome includes a software implementation of the infrastructure with built-in technologies for these components. The development results will be disseminated via the Web, seminars, publications, and industrial collaborations. The educational plan is designed to significantly advance students' knowledge, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and prepare them well for future professional endeavors. The project is applicable to any large-scale distributed information-sharing network deployed in the scientific, commercial, and homeland-security fields, to name some.