What Is a Peer To Peer Network?

Peer-to-peer (P2P), also known as peer-to-peer network , is an Internet system without a central server and relying on user groups to exchange information. Its role is to reduce the number of nodes in the previous network transmission. To reduce the risk of data loss. Unlike a central network system with a central server, each user end of a peer-to-peer network is both a node and a server. Any node cannot directly find other nodes and must rely on its household group for information exchange.

The P2P architecture embodies a key concept of Internet technology. This concept was first described on April 7, 1969

An important goal of P2P networks is to enable all clients to provide resources, including

• Have better parallel processing capabilities.

• Use memory to manage data exchange and improve performance.

• Without investing a lot of money in the server's software and hardware equipment.

• Suitable for small-scale networks and easy to maintain. ^[2]

  • The setup is more complicated, in addition to the development server side, there is also a dedicated client.

  • Used in a large-scale network, the resource sharing is disordered, the management is difficult, and the security is low. ^[2]

    There are many applications for point-to-point technology. It is very common to share files containing various formats of audio, video, data, etc. Instant data (such as IP phone communication, Anychat audio and video development software) can also be transmitted using P2P technology.

    Some networks and communication channels, such as Napster, OpenNAP, and IRC @ find, use a master-slave architecture to handle some tasks (such as search functions), and at the same time use P2P structures to handle other tasks. Some networks, such as Gnutella and Freenet, use a P2P structure to handle all tasks, and are sometimes considered real P2P networks. Although Gnutella also uses a directory server to facilitate nodes to obtain the network addresses of other nodes.

    There are also academic P2P networks. On January 28, 2015, the developers of Pennsylvania State University joined forces

    Technically, a pure P2P application must implement the concept of only peer-to-peer protocols, without servers and clients. But such pure P2P applications and networks are rare. Most of the networks and applications called P2P actually include or rely on some non-peer units, such as DNS. At the same time, real applications also use multiple protocols, enabling nodes to be clients, servers, and peers at the same time or in time. Completely decentralized peer-to-peer networks have been used for many years, as in the two examples of Usenet (1979) and FidoNet (1984).

    Many P2P systems use stronger peers (called Super Nodes) as servers, and those client nodes are connected to a super peer in a star fashion.

    In the late 1990s, in order to promote the development of peer-to-peer network applications, Sun Corporation added some classes to Java technology, allowing developers to develop decentralized real-time chat applets and applications. . This work is now continued by the JXTA project.

    P2P systems and applications have attracted a lot of attention in computer science research. Some outstanding research projects include the Chord Project, ARPANET, the PAST storage utility, P-Grid (an autonomous organization's emerging overlay network), and CoopNet content distribution systems. ^[2]