I am studying distributed computing and struggling to understand how Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) work. Can you recommend any resources, such as books, articles, or anything else, to help me?
Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
1–10 of 22 posts
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#2[flagged]
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#3Here is an description for the BitTorrent DHT
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1332107/dht-in-torrents#...
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#4Read the research paper about the Chord algorithm: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/chord:sigcomm01/chord_sigc..., then implement the algorithm on your own (paper contains pseudo code).
Or start here, generally read high level details about the algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_(peer-to-peer).
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#5Read the research paper about the Chord algorithm: https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/papers/chord:sigcomm01/chord_sigc... , then implement the algorithm on your own (paper contains pseudo code). Or start here, generally read high level details about the algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chord_(peer-to-peer) .
I second this advice. Chord is a very good place to start
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#6If you scroll to the bottom, I've a linkdump worth considering: https://h0p3.nekoweb.org/#Outopos%3A%20DHT
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#7[flagged]
This is getting downvoted but I would also recommend it. It's much faster than reading papers and, unless you are doing cutting edge research, LLMs will be able to accurately explain everything you need to know for common algorithms like this.
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#8Here is an description for the BitTorrent DHT https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1332107/dht-in-torrents#...
The link one answer down is more explanatory
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#9[flagged]
This is getting downvoted but I would also recommend it. It's much faster than reading papers and, unless you are doing cutting edge research, LLMs will be able to accurately explain everything you need to know for common algorithms like this.
It's getting downvoted because it's the equivalent of saying "google it".
Re: Ask HN: Struggling to Understand DHTs – Any Good Resources?
#10The most widely used DHT is Kademlia from Petar Maymounkov and David Mazières.
It is used in Ethereum, IPFS, I2P, Gnutella DHT, and many other applications.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kademlia
https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/~petar/papers/maymounkov-kademlia...
https://web.archive.org/web/20120128120732/http://www.cs.ric...