1. Field
One or more embodiments within the following description relate to a resource sharing method and system, and more particularly, to a resource sharing system including a plurality of edge peers that can individually store a resource and a plurality of super peers that manage the edge peers and a resource sharing method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
As wired and wireless Internet technologies develop, resource sharing systems using the Internet have been appearing more frequently. Such resource sharing systems are utilizing peer-to-peer (P2P) as networking technology for sharing resources. The P2P includes a plurality of peers that are connected to each other via a network and can individually store resources. In the P2P, peers share the resources such as hardware, software and contents via the network.
P2P schemes include a hybrid P2P scheme and a pure P2P scheme. In the hybrid P2P scheme, peers are connected individually to a single central server and share resources through the central server. In the pure P2P scheme, peers are connected directly to each other to share resources.
However, the hybrid P2P scheme has a problem in that, since a load is concentrated on a central server, it is impossible to share the resources when the central server is or becomes inoperative. The pure P2P scheme has a problem in that it takes a long time to share resources since a request and a transmission of the resources are performed according to a tree format sequencing, with all transmissions of resources only being performed according to the tree format, e.g., up or down different branchings.
In order to resolve the above problems, a distributed hybrid P2P scheme has been developed. In the distributed hybrid P2P network, peers include edge peers that provide or receive resources and super peers that manage the edge peers. That is, in the distributed hybrid P2P scheme, the edge peers are connected individually to super peers connected to each other, and the edge peers share resources through at least one super peer.
However, a definite name of a corresponding resource is necessary to search for a desired resource in a distributed hybrid P2P scheme. That is, a super peer merely searches for a resource that has the same name as a search word. For this reason, if a certain edge peer requests a resource using part of a name of a desired resource, a super peer searches for a resource totally different from the resource desired by the edge peer. Therefore, a user cannot easily search for a desired resource in such a resource sharing system.