This sounds almost exactly like eDonkey, which is what we used before BitTorrent. eDonkey used to be much better for rare items, though BitTorrent worked bette

This sounds almost exactly like eDonkey, which is what we used before BitTorrent. eDonkey used to be much better for rare items, though BitTorrent worked better for popular items. eDonkey used to let you start searches that would run for days, asking neighbour nodes to ask other neighbour nodes, etc. I miss it and I think there's a lot that can be learned from it.