Peer to Peer - P2P

A peer-to-peer (abbreviated to P2P) computer network is one in which each computer in the network can act as a client or server for the other computers in the network, allowing shared access to various resources such as files, peripherals, and sensors without the need for a central server. P2P networks can be set up within the home, a business, or over the Internet. Each network type requires all computers in the network to use the same or a compatible program to connect to each other and access files and other resources found on the other computer. P2P networks can be used for sharing content such as audio, video, data, or anything in digital format. 

P2P is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads among peers. Peers are equally privileged participants in the application. Each computer in the network is referred to as a node. The owner of each computer on a P2P network would set aside a portion of its resources - such as processing power, disk storage, or network bandwidth - to be made directly available to other network participant, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. With this model, peers are both suppliers and consumers of resources, in contrast to the traditional client–server model where only the server supply (send), and clients consume (receive). Emerging collaborative P2P systems are going beyond the era of peers doing similar things while sharing resources, and are looking for diverse peers that can bring in unique resources and capabilities to a virtual community thereby empowering it to engage in greater tasks beyond that can be accomplished by individual peers, yet are beneficial to all the peers.

Social and economic impact

The concept of P2P is increasingly evolving to an expanded usage as the relational dynamic active in distributed networks, i.e., not just computer-to-computer, but human-to-human. Yochai Benkler has coined the term commons-based peer production to denote collaborative projects such as free and open source software and Wikipedia. Associated with peer production are the concepts of:

· peer governance (referring to the manner in which peer production projects are managed)
· peer property (referring to the new type of licenses which recognize individual authorship but not exclusive property rights, such as the GNU General Public License and the Creative Commons licenses)
· peer distribution (or the manner in which products, particularly peer-produced products, are distributed)

Applications

There are numerous applications of peer-to-peer networks:

· Content delivery
· Exchange of physical goods, services, or space
· Networking
· Science
· Search
· Communications networks