How does the Distributed Hashing Table protocol work?

Question

I am trying to understand how the DHT protocol works, especially on the file-sharing-torrent world. Having read many articles, one is still confused with the filename-value hash generation. Below were one's thought on how the DHT works: For example, one wanted to join a p2p network to share some files. For these files, hashmap keys were generated and "traveled" through the network until the nodes who are responsible for these generated keys were accessed. Then each of these nodes adds to its list, a record that says "the guy with the x IP address has the file that is related with the specified key.

When one searched for a file, the hashmap key was generated for this file and traveled the network until the node responsible for this key was found. Then this node is communicated with one and the IP addresses for the nodes that host the real data are sent.

Are the above correct??

Answer 1

Your thoughts are correct. This is the general idea behind DHT's.