Chord DHT

Ion Stoica, Robert Morris, David Karger, Frans Kaashoek & Hari Balakrishnan, 2001

Chord (2001) maps keys and nodes onto a ring; each node keeps a successor list and a finger table toward exponentially spaced identifiers. This schematic animates a toy ring of seven peers and a fixed lookup path toward the successor of key 36 (owner node 42), with one finger arc highlighted per hop. Production systems run stabilization in the background and use larger identifier spaces.