A Scalable Content-Addressable Network

Hash tables - which map "Keys" onto "Values" - are an essential building block in modern software systems. It is believed that a similar functionality would be equally valuable to large distributed systems. This paper introduces the concept of a Content-Addressable Network (CAN) as a distributed infrastructure that provides hash table-like functionality on Internet-like scales. The CAN design is scalable, fault-tolerant and completely self-organizing, and the paper demonstrates its scalability, robustness and low-latency properties through simulation.