The Content Addressable Network (CAN) is a distributed, decentralized P2P infrastructure that provides hash table functionality on an Internet-like scale. CAN is designed to be scalable, fault tolerant, and self-organizing. The architectural design is a virtual multi-dimensional Cartesian coordinate space on a multi-torus. This d-dimensional coordinate space is completely logical. The entire coordinate space is dynamically partitioned among all the peers (N number of peers) in the system such that every peer possesses its individual, distinct zone within the overall space. A CAN peer maintains a routing table that holds the IP address and virtual coordinate zone of each of its neighbor coordinates. A peer routes a message towards its destination using a simple greedy forwarding to the neighbor peer that is closest to the destination coordinates.
Do not mixup with Controller-area network (CAN, CAN-bus) used mostly in automotive and industrial applications.

See also

• Chord project
• Pastry
• Tapestry