> The distance between two given hashes is simply the result of [hash1] xor [hash2].
This is the main innovation of Kademlia compared to other DHTs like Chord which uses a simple difference-modulo-N distance metric. Kademlia was the first DHT with a symmetric distance metric, which has the advantage that peer-to-peer connections can actually be used bidirectionally. That means that Kademlia networks need only half of the active connections to reach the same level of connectivity compared to earlier DHTs.
As far as I know, this is pretty much the only advantage Kademlia has over other DHTs, but of course it is quite a significant difference in practice.
Ah, you are quite right, I should have emphasized that point! (I guess I simply wanted to get to the drogulus part, but ended up expanding a bit.)
Indeed, the main paper introducing Kademlia is basically called, "P2P network based on the XOR metric." That is its distinguishing feature, but it is indeed enough to make all the difference.
Just to clarify:
> The distance between two given hashes is simply the result of [hash1] xor [hash2].
This is the main innovation of Kademlia compared to other DHTs like Chord which uses a simple difference-modulo-N distance metric. Kademlia was the first DHT with a symmetric distance metric, which has the advantage that peer-to-peer connections can actually be used bidirectionally. That means that Kademlia networks need only half of the active connections to reach the same level of connectivity compared to earlier DHTs.
As far as I know, this is pretty much the only advantage Kademlia has over other DHTs, but of course it is quite a significant difference in practice.