Contents An Introduction to Query Processing on Distributed Networks The Routing Paradigm Indexing Schemes and Approximate Query Processing Content-based Query Routing Assessment of Query Approximations

The peer-to-peer networking paradigm has emerged as an exciting and popular approach for interconnecting individual systems. However, networks that eschew centralized indexing servers have demonstrated a lack of robustness as the node population increases. [1], [2] We present a minor modification to the distributed networking paradigm that allows for an approximate indexing of node and branch content and query routing based on this approximate index information. This modification results in an end to the exponential communication requirements for searches across distribute