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Like Ethereum, RChain borrows the peer-to-peer mesh overlay from BitTorrent and other file-sharing technologies. The current implementation in RChain is based on the parts of the Kademlia protocol that establish and maintain a view of some subset of the network (a node's peers). This is described in more detail here.
Each peer included in the network overlay for a particular node may carry subjective measures. These include reputation, a measure of how well the peer is performing the duties from the protocol perspective. Also included might be metric information about latency to this node or measured throughput (if doing large transfers, for instance). These measures may be used for a number of reasons. A node may wish to replace underperforming peers. Alternatively, a node may wish to pick a certain number of the best performing peers to use in a validation subnet.
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