Kademlia DHT: XOR-Distance Radar (2D)

Network

Network size 32

K-bucket size 4

K-bucket size caps how many contacts each real bucket holds — a smaller K reveals fewer new candidates per hop, so lookups can take more hops to converge.

Playback

Speed 1.0x

Live Output

Hop count

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XOR distance

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Candidates seen

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Nodes queried

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Target key

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distance(a,b) = a XOR b bucket(d) = bitLength(d) - 1

How it works

This 2D companion runs the identical Kademlia XOR-distance routing and iterative lookup as the 3D version, but lays the identifier space out as a literal radar: the target key sits at the exact center, and every node's ring is its real bit-length distance to that target — bucket 0 nearest, bucket 15 farthest.

XOR metric — distance is a XOR b; the bucket a contact falls into is the position of its distance's highest set bit, so halving the distance always moves a node one ring inward.
Iterative lookup — each hop queries the closest unqueried candidate found so far, which reveals that node's own real neighbor list as fresh candidates. Watch the highlighted path spiral from the outer rings toward the center.
K-bucket size — lower it and each query reveals fewer new candidates, which can add hops before convergence; raise it and lookups tend to finish in fewer, longer jumps.