Abstract: Existing topology-aware methods have mostly the disadvantages of consuming large amount of bandwidth, and needing complex calculations. For the purpose of resolving these problems, multi-level chord, or MLC, was proposed as a layered physical location-aware P2P network topology. MLC used a simple method that overlay network structure constructed by directly used physical network topology. This method ensured that nodes which were closer in overlay network were nodes which were closer in physical network, while avoiding the shortcomings of existing methods. Analysis showed through the layered topology mechanism and the role of GL(Group Leader) and SL(Slice Leader), that a better balance of the load can be achieved. With the bottom-up transmitting mechanism, the searching speed improved obviously. Period partial update algorithm can reduce some of the traffic. Experiments showed that MLC is a more effective network topology which has better performance than Chord in areas of hop in logical path, delay-time of physical path and average transfer time.