creator Frieder, Ophir creator Yee, Wai Gen A method for improving searches in a peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing system that includes a plurality of server computers. A content file, identified by a descriptor including at least one metadata term and a mathematical identifier that uniquely identifies the content file in one of the server computers, is selected for searching. Other server computers are searched to find one or more matching content files; one that has a descriptor with a mathematical identifier matching the mathematical identifier of the first content file. The descriptors of the matching content files are returned to the searching server computer and used to expand the local descriptor. Submitted by Aric Ahrens (ahrens@iit.edu) on 2012-03-20T17:43:51Z No. of bitstreams: 1 7558789.pdf: 474118 bytes, checksum: 40c2e04ebfaad25b3c906cb31f652a1c (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2012-03-20T17:43:51Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 7558789.pdf: 474118 bytes, checksum: 40c2e04ebfaad25b3c906cb31f652a1c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-07 Illinois Institute of Technology 2012-03-20 2009-07-07 7,558,789 http://hdl.handle.net/10560/2672 en United States Patent Patent reformatted digital application/pdf No Copyright - United States http://rightsstatements.org/page/NoC-US/1.0/ Open Access