Traditional DHT structures optimize data searches over large-scale networks, but provide very poor support for range queries. Several schemes in the literature attempt to overcome this issue, but they fail to combine load balancing, low message overhead, and low latency search operations. In this article we present DRing, an efficient layered solution that directly supports range queries over a ring-like DHT structure. We improve load balancing by focusing queries on the nodes that store data, and by updating neighbour information through an optimistic approach. DRing reduces overhead and latency in environments where queries significantly outnumber data insertion operations. We analyse DRing through simulation and show that our solution does not rely on data distribution.