Abstract
Co-operative peer-to-peer systems have lot of relevance due to their desirable properties like lack of centralized control and transparency. But in certain applications, the stability of peer-to-peer systems is affected when concentrated load spikes occur. In this work, we explore the case for cloud-assisted peer-to-peer systems to handle spikes using peer-to-peer search as a case study. We identify the issues involved in realizing cloud-assisted peer-to-peer systems and propose, implement and evaluate Cloud-Assisted Peer-to-Peer Search (CAPS) architecture which fits in with the co-operative nature of peer-to-peer systems. The experimental results show that CAPS provides stability to peer-to-peer search service during query spikes without affecting user experience adversely.