<p>Could any one give an explanation on how a DHT works?</p>

<p>Nothing too heavy, just the basics.</p>

DHTs provide the same type of interface to the user as a normal hashtable (look up a value by key), but the data is distributed over an arbitrary number of connected nodes.  Wikipedia has a good basic introduction that I would essentially be regurgitating if I write more -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table