Peer-to-peer

P2P redirects here. For the telecommunications term PTP, see Point-to-Point.P2P can also stand for Pay-to-play in gaming.

Computer science perspective

Technically, a completely pure peer-to-peer application must implement only peering protocols that do not recognize the concepts of "server" and "client". Such pure peer applications and networks are rare. Most networks and applications described as peer-to-peer actually contain or rely on some non-peer elements, such as DNS. Also, real world applications often use multiple protocols and act as client, server, and peer simultaneously, or over time. Completely decentralized networks of peers have been in use for many years: two examples are Usenet (1979) and FidoNet (1984).

Related Topics:
DNS - Usenet - 1979 - FidoNet - 1984

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Many P2P systems use stronger peers (super-peers, super-nodes) as servers and client-peers are connected in a star-like fashion to a single super-peer.

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Sun added classes to the Java technology to speed the development of peer-to-peer applications quickly in the late 1990s so that developers could build decentralized real time chat applets and applications before Instant Messaging networks were popular. This effort is now being continued with the JXTA project.

Related Topics:
1990s - JXTA

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Peer-to-peer systems and applications have attracted a great deal of attention from computer science research; some prominent research projects include the Chord project, ARPANET, the PAST storage utility, the P-Grid, a self-organized and emerging overlay network and the CoopNet content distribution system (see below for external links related to these projects).

Related Topics:
Chord project - ARPANET - PAST storage utility - P-Grid - CoopNet content distribution system

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