Identifying new contacts in a peer to peer network

摘要

A method identifying new peer to peer (P2P) network contacts comprising: transmitting contacts from a first store to a first comparator S502; at the first comparator, comparing the transmitted contacts with contacts from a second store to identify common contacts between the first and second stores, the first comparator outputting a contacts result based on the identification of the common contacts S504; at a second comparator, comparing the contacts result output from the first comparator with contacts from a third store S510; and using an output of the second comparator to identify at least one contact to recommend as a new contact to a recommendee user in the network S514, S516; wherein the first store is at a network node and the first comparator is at another network node, and the contacts transmitted from the first store are transmitted over the network to the first comparator. Preferably hash values are generated from the contacts and used in place of the contacts.