Techniques for locating an object such as a data item or service on a node in a distributed system on a computer network include receiving communication cost data that indicates a cost of physically transferring data among nodes in a computer network. A node identifier for a node is determined based on the communication cost data such that a distance between two node identifiers for a pair of nodes is based on a cost of physically transferring data between the pair of nodes. For a particular object that has a particular object identifier, a closest node is determined among the plurality of nodes based on the particular object identifier and node identifiers corresponding to the nodes. The object is located through the closest node, such as by retrieving it or a pointer or an identifier for another node that is still closer to the object.