The Design of TerraDir

We present the design and initial evaluation of TerraDir: an approach forimplementing customizable, distributed, peer-to-peer directories over
which a broad range of wide-area resource discovery applications can
be implemented. TerraDir's structure is two-tiered, consisting of a base
protocol for providing arbitrary application-layer connectivity, and
dynamic view materializations that efficiently realize different
user-specified views of application-layer resources. TerraDir is
specifically
designed for data that can be arranged in a rooted hierarchy, and provides
very efficient and robust lookups over such data while still being able
to allow efficient searching.
(Also referenced as UMIACS-TR-2001-4299)