Distributed hash tables (DHTs) are a class of decentralized distributed systems that partition ownership of a set of keys among participating nodes, and can efficiently route messages to the unique owner of any given key. Each node is analogous to an array slot in a hash table. DHTs are typically designed to scale to large numbers of nodes and to handle continual node arrivals and failures. This infrastructure can be used to build more complex services, such as distributed file systems, peer-to-peer file sharing systems, cooperative web caching, multicast, anycast, domain name services, and instant messaging.
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