Broadcast Mechanisms in Peer-to-Peer Overlay Networks: A Survey and Taxonomy

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks serve as the backbone for large-scale message dissemination in distributed systems such as blockchain platforms, decentralized storage networks, and content delivery infrastructures, making efficient broadcast mechanisms essential for achieving scalability, reliability, and low-latency propagation. Despite the abundance of P2P broadcast methods proposed over the past decades, existing studies often examine individual dissemination mechanisms or isolated design dimensions, limiting systematic comparison across heterogeneous P2P systems. This survey integrates three established classification dimensions—transmission strategy, relay control, and overlay topology—into a unified analytical framework and extends them with an explicit layered-architecture dimension for modern modular P2P systems. Using this four-dimensional framework, we analyze not only the individual characteristics of each dimension but also the cross-dimensional combinations through which transmission, relay, topology, and layering choices jointly shape broadcast behavior. The analysis focuses on engineering trade-offs involving propagation latency, duplicate-message overhead, reachability, control traffic, fault tolerance, and implementation complexity. To provide a quantitative illustration of the completion-delay–duplicate-message-overhead trade-off under the evaluated conditions, we supplement the analytical taxonomy with a controlled mechanism-level case study that compares representative duplicate-suppression configurations under the same topology families and nominal target-degree settings, workload settings, and network conditions. We further examine how structural properties of dissemination graphs and auxiliary mechanisms such as peer scoring influence robustness under dynamic or adversarial conditions. Finally, we discuss recent dissemination architectures, boundary cases that resist clean classification, and future research directions including adaptive broadcast strategies, history-aware dissemination control, and encapsulation-preserving cross-layer cooperation. The resulting framework provides a structured reference for interpreting existing P2P broadcast designs and guiding the development of scalable, robust, and modular dissemination systems.