Talk:Peer-to-peer

Merger proposal

Please see talk:File sharing for a proposed split/merge of this with file sharing and move out of the common file trading content into its own article, distinct from the generic concepts. Jamesday 16:32, 20 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Lists for eDonkey and ed2k should be merged.

Kademlia is not a protocol, but an algorithm. Different protocols based on that algorithm are already listed on the Kademlia page.

BitTorrent is not a network, it's a pair of protocols (tracker and peer). Each file or set of files being shared has its own network. (They may happen to share trackers, but they're not connected.)

I agree with the bittorrent opinion, BitTorrent is usually cited as a file-distribution system, although the activities that occur are similar. BitTorrent uses peer-to-peer technology, but not in the way it's listed under, someone clean it up please. zdude255

Does this article even make sense? Peer-to-peer is not the same thing as distributed filesharing. True, distributed filesharing is a very common use of P2P networks, but the two shouldn't be sysnonymous, especially not in a wikipedia article where folks that know better are supposed to inform folks who don't. How about something noting the the internet is a P2P network, or was, before ISP's began blocking ports and NATing connections? Then you could mention that some common uses of P2P networks are distributed filesharing, and lay out what the historical progression is from client-server to P2P (i.e. dialup/timesharing to the internet)? In most places, letting the distinction go unaddressed is fine, but on Wikipedia, I think we ought to do better, and be as precise as possible. drakaan

Peer-to-Peer is a networking protocol. Rewording is necessary - andrew.harris@bestbuy.com

Peer-to-peer is not a networking protocol. It is a term for describing or classifying networking protocols according to some of the characteristics they exhibit. Haakon 18:59, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Haakon; to be more exact, I would say peer-to-peer is a network design principle, or perhaps a network topology. A good counterpart to the term peer-to-peer is Client-server, which in Wikipedia belongs to Category:Network architecture. The Client-server article begins with "Client server is network architecture which..." - this is a good start and I think Peer-to-peer should start the same way and belong to the same category. In an encyclopedic article we should definitely not mix up peer-to-peer principle and peer-to-peer filesharing. Ahtih 23:59, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Unless others object, I am going to start changing this article over time towards describing P2P as network architecture. This will involve numerous changes, such as restructuring sections and moving most of filesharing content into filesharing-specific articles. Ahtih 23:55, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Haakon and Ahtih. The current revision has only partially made this distinction between P2P and file sharing -- the section on legal controversy, for example, has no place in this article.

A minor point: I'm not sure that "network architecture" is the best way to describe P2P. Better choices would be "distributed systems architecture" or "distributed system design principle". For example, BitTorrent is definitely a distributed system but it might not be a network, depending on your definition. To me, network implies a distributed system whose purpose is to provide a communication infrastructure or service. Although BT nodes communicate, they do not provide a general communications service -- the only thing you can do is download a file, rather than ask BT to please send message M to node X for you.

Also, I see the term used much more often in its adjective form rather than its noun form.

Here is a candidate definition (working from Ahtih's much-improved current revision): "A peer-to-peer system is a distributed system whose component nodes participate in similar roles." (Take the distributed system article with a grain of salt as it is confused with distributed computing, in a similar way as this article has confused P2P and P2P file sharing.) --Nethgirb 01:01, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

In my eyes the term network is broad enough to cover BitTorrent etc as well, but I see your point and changed the article accordingly. I think there is no need to strictly replace all occurences of network though. Ahtih 23:29, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree, it doesn't have to be so strict. There are certainly senses of the term "network" which apply to BitTorrent. My perspective is mostly from the academic computer science literature, but even there, it's not so precisely defined. --Nethgirb 00:03, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

---

The use of the term "first generation" and so on, referring to Napster and it successors, should (at the least) have a disclaimer indicating that this is merely a popular usage among the "file sharing" crowd (or better yet, it should be jettisoned as the uninformed misinformation that it is). That was by no stretch of the imagination the first generation of peer-to-peer networking systems, and not even the first to be used widely outside of academia and research. Apple's LocalTalk, Artisoft's LANtastic, Microsoft's (still in use) workgroup-based "file and printer sharing", and a dozen other widely-used peer-to-peer networking packages pre-dated Napster and the whole music-and-movie bootlegging movement by a decade or more. Tverbeek 02:05, 24 Oct 2004

It's true that P2P is nowadays used or rather confused with file sharing over a peer-to-peer network. The term itself is much older and peer-to-peer protocols/services exist since ages. Personally, I recall to have the term when I used OS/2 although I don't remember which service was meant there. Though, most of those examples you've given are not very wide-spread nor representative, in my opinion. NNTP (Usenet) would be a better example and DNS has some peer-to-peer characteristics as well. One difference may be that older peer-to-peer services/protocols ran on servers and were installed by admins i.e., the servers of the networks were connected in a peer-to-peer fashion but there was still a client-side and a normal user would use the client-side only. The now popular P2P systems are ran by simple users on non-server systems. --195.62.99.203 17:38, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

External links

There are way too many extraneous external links in this article. It needs serious trimming by someone who knows what is relevant and what is not. Rl 18:31, 16 May 2005 (UTC)

No kidding. I trimmed it down seriously. In my opinion, we should only link to resources that are essential for a deeper understanding of the subject. The point is not to provide a comprehensive collection of links to everything related -- for that, we have dmoz. So first, I removed everything only pertaining to file sharing, since this article is about peer-to-peer and not file sharing. Then, I removed the links to special-interest or peculiar sites, or to pure company sites. I think the sites we are left with are good. Sites can be added if they are relevant. Haakon 19:46, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I find this Article is lacking structure. I like the history part, however , I think after that the paper should go from possible applications (including, but beyond file sharing), legal and security problems to the technical realisation in nowadays P2P systems and upcoming research.muellerw 18:37, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Pro P2P Business Models

It may be relevant to add information regarding Pro P2P business models where P2P technology is a key factor in reducing distribution costs while retaining a new revenue structure.

Wikipedia p2p?

Isn't Peer-to-peer a good idea for a non-commercial project like wikipedia? I have recently seen that project Gutenberg employs this technique. I like the idea. It cuts the costs and thus the dependencies on donations.

Dijjer

What about Dijjer integration via the dijjer:// pseudo-protocool? Unify all traffic in HTTP. dijjer.org

Why not its own category???

Why did Peer-to-peer lose its own category? File sharing is only one aspect of what peer-to-peer networks and programs are used for.

I agree. --Aravind 15:01, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Have some info

Although using p2p networks as a source of music sharing has gone down to 41%, people are finding ways to keep sharing. 23% of the U.S. is still practicing swapping music without paying. A recent survey of the same people was taken and found that: 19% share though other people's MP3 player, 28% said email and instant messaging and 4% through blogging. It was a survey of 1500 people. Done in Jan-Feb 2005 and again in 2005.

Info from:

Source: P2P Use Is Down, But Piracy Has New Outlets, Study Says Antony Bruno Billboard; Apr 9, 2005; 117, 15; JuniorQuest Magazines pg. 8

Ambient network link

Hi! I added "Ambient network" as a link to this page's "See also". Ambient network is basically a network infrastructure that uses the peer-to-peer paradigm to allow the merging of network functions (i.e. connection, but also other functions). It seems to be the future, at least for me. --Msoos 12:46, 31 July 2005 (UTC) moo

Generations

A clear definition of the (first, second and third) generations of P2P-clients would be pleasant.--DXL 20:54, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

These "generations" are a file sharing phenomenon and does not apply to peer-to-peer in general. They are treated in the file sharing article. Haakon 21:10, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

I see, thanks for the information. --DXL 14:24, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

Networks, protocols and applications

This section is sick. I still don't know what to do with it. It is equal to having a software written in C language section in C programming language article. I was going to add DALiWorld because it is very different from many other p2p uses, but currently it makes no sense to do so. --Easyas12c 00:11, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

This article needs some serious cleaning...

The article is fairly well done until the 'Networks, Protocols and Applications' section where it balloons into a horrendous mess. I cleaned up the multi-network clients some, but it'll be a whole host more work for the networks...

Gnutella: Acquisition, BearShare, BetBug, Cabos, Gnucleus, Grokster, iMesh, gtk-gnutella, Kiwi Alpha, LimeWire, FrostWire, MLdonkey, mlMac, Morpheus, Phex, Poisoned, Swapper (this link seems to need some work; it doesn't actually take you a description of the p2p program as the other links do, but instead links you to Lilo and Stitch), Shareaza, XoloX

Hybrid P2P

Can someone explain what "Route terminals are used addresses, which are referenced by a set of indices to obtain an absolute address." under Hybrid P2P means in the article?

Mixed P2P

Do we really want separate classifications for 'Pure P2P', 'Hybrid P2P' and 'Mixed P2P'.

The current classification is very unclear. I think what is really wanted here is just two classifications - 'Pure P2P' should be one of them, and 'Hybrid P2P' - being Pure P2P with centralised elements, should be the other. Comments? --Matthewleslie 14:38, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Structure and Unstructured

No mention is given to the classification of peer to peer architectures into structured and unstructured. This is a commonly used classification, to differentiate between search networks like gnutella, and adressable networks like Chord or CAN. This should really be added? --Matthewleslie 14:41, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

I just added a brief structured vs unstructured classification. Most of the structured p2p need wiki pages. I am working on it. --Aravind 15:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

These descriptions are relatively poor and have misstatements of fact regarding scoped flooding and other techniques used for unstructured networks. Strongly recommend a literature review...these assertions are outdated and proven wrong.

Application of P2P Network

(Illegal) File-sharing seems to dominate any discussion of P2P networks, however these can be put to other less controversial uses. I'd like to make (as far as possible) a comprehensive list: So far the list I've got (far from comprehensive is):

File sharing
Grid applications (there will be sub-applications here)
Digital Cinema

Please add to this list and then it could be appended to the article.

Does anyone know the point of the useless TV reference in the "Application of P2P Network outside Computer Science" section? No explanation is offered for that bullet item so I would recommend deleting it unless someone wants to explain what specific applications they are referring to. amRadioHed 04:26, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

The Creative Commons License?

(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 License)

Create Commons is not a single license but a set of licenses. Not all of them are copyleft licenses like the GNU GPL. "and some Creative Commons Licenses" is a more correct phrase. Sunil Mohan 18:35, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Gnunet

It seemed a little odd to put the GNUNet logo at the top of the article. Wonderful though GNUNet no doubt is, does it really deserve such a prominent picture? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matthewleslie (talk • contribs)

I thought exactly the same, but been too jaded to say anything. It's a strange and arbitrary choice of image. Haakon 09:12, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Beyond a technical definition

This existing p2p page takes an exclusively technological definition of peer to peer, while the same distributed dynamic exists in every distributed system. Thus the peer to peer meme is now being generally used in the human organisational field and many other areas, most notably by Yochai Benkler and his Wealth of Networks on commons-based peer production. In my own work: I distinguish peer production, peer governance, peer property. Merging it with filesharing would make it even narrower still. So I think we should go in the opposite direction. 1) give a general abstract definition of peer to peer 2) then how it applies in the various field, including, but not exclusively, as a technical architecture. - Michel Bauwens, p2pfoundation.net

i dont get it

How do people know about all these p2p file sharing networks? Even though they might not be public or non-public??? Call of duty 18:30, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

OS Downloads

Hey, is it true that entire OS', such as Windows XP can be downloaded off of a P2P? The Wretched 04:29, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

If it's made of bits, P2P can move it. Whether it works when you get it, is your problem, and irrelevant to this article.WolfKeeper 04:50, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, about that, is there a way to make it work besides putting through optical disc authoring program? The Wretched 08:00, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Do NOT Merge

P2P Streaming and Peer-to-Peer Networks in general are VERY different topics, and should not be merged into a single article.

Requesting correction of one sentence (EU Copyright Directive)

The article states that "The EU Copyright Directive ... prohibits peer to peer, claiming it is a violation of the directive". This sentence is really misleading and should at least be written: "The EU Copyright Directive ... prohibits distribution of copyrighted material". The distribution of personal material (my holiday photos, for instance) over p2p networks is NOT barred under European law: it would be insane.

2 November 2006

Peer-to-Peer goes to "Weekend at Bernie's"

I found that when I clicked on a "peer to peer" hyperlink from the Windows Vista article it goes to an article about "Weekend at Bernie's" titled Peer-to-peer However there is an article on Peer-to-peer that is redirected from P2P. Can someone somehow delete the "Bernie" article titled "Peer to Peer"? I don't know how. I checked and there is another article which is the same as the "Bernie" one but it is titled "weekend at bernies" (so the P2P article with the wrong title may be deleted) Sorry if this sounds confusing!

I can't reproduce this problem.... — coelacan talk — 22:47, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

it happened to me too. really weird...

Usenet

I removed all text pertaining to Usenet since it is not a P2P protocol. 83.147.180.185 13:39, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Usenet certainly is a P2P protocol, as per the definition given in the article. Therefore, I'm reverting your changes. Wrs1864 14:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

While SMTP is client server at the network periphery, it is P2P at the core - as all relaying MTAs such as Sendmail, Exim, Postfix etc. have both client and server functionality. I think it will be useful to include a note about this aspect of SMTP alongside Usenet. --Copsewood 15:16, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Pictures?

Attention all artists better than me....this article needs pictures....71.168.108.66 18:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Comparison of networks table

We have Comparison of file sharing applications. I think we should also have Comparison of file sharing networks, like Peer-to-peer#Networks.2C_protocols_and_applications. The big column I want to see is number of users, but things like centralized/decentralized, encryption, etc. would be good, too. — Omegatron 22:31, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree; it would be a nice addition to wikipedia :) - Rubikfreak 00:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Is there a big difference...

is there a big difference between this article and this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer-to-peer_file_sharing?

Yes, or at least there should be. "Peer-to-peer" is just a way of building applications. You hear it most often in the term "P2P file sharing" but there are many other kinds of P2P systems as well, e.g. multicast, or BGP. --Nethgirb 21:07, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Where are the P2P communications protocols?

I'm a newbie looking for info about SIP, XMPP/Jingle, and other such nifty things. I expected these to be referenced from this page. There was some general info about P2P protocols at the beginning, but it quickly digressed (as I saw it!) into file sharing protocols to the near exclusion of all others. Thanks!

• You're right. The current state of the Networks, protocols and applications section is rather horrific. While many file sharing applications are peer-to-peer systems, we already have a different article for that. The whole sectional probably needs a complete rewrite from scratch. When it comes to SIP and XMPP/Jingle, those are client-server protocols. There is a P2PSIP working group going on at IETF developing a peer-to-peer version of SIP.--Teemuk 06:05, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Peer-to-peer or File Sharing??

This article seems to talk almost exclusively of file sharing networks, while it should cover much more; for example P2P LANs (e.g. workgroups) and such. --Arny 16:52, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

-- I'll agree with that. Peer-to-Peer is a network architecture/topology, not Internet based file sharing. Discussions on File sharing have no place in this article. Internet based P2P networking refers to the fact that files are downloaded directly from one machine to another, its a loosely used term, as most services make use of a central tracking server.

Authoritative Reference

I would recommend reading "A survey of content distribution technologies", by Androutsellis-Theotokis and Spinellis (http://scholar.google.es/scholar?hl=es&lr=&cluster=17926305849519525611) to get informed about peer-to-peer architectures.

They propose the following definition:

Peer-to-peer systems are distributed systems consisting of interconnected nodes able to self-organize into network topologies with the purpose of sharing resources such as content, CPU cycles, storage and bandwidth, capable of adapting to failures and accommodating transient populations of nodes while mantaining acceptable connectivity and performance, without requiring the intermediation or support of a global centralized server or authority.

Besides, I think that this article should talk less on the filesharing topic, despite its popularity, it is only a particular application of p2p technologies. As described in Ian J. Taylor "From P2P to Web Services and Grids" examples of P2P applications could be:

File sharing/storage programs: Gnutella, Napster, Limewire and KaZaA.
CPU resource-sharing systems: SETI@home, United Devices, Entropia and XtremWeb.
Instant Messaging: ICQ, Jabber.
Conferencing applications: NetMeeting, Skype

Alberto Cuesta

(158.42.165.62 09:03, 13 July 2007 (UTC))

University networks; block many applications

I am usually connected to the internet via a university network. This is ordinary cable, but unfortunately via the servers which are being operated by the university. They have succeeded in blocing all/most filesharing applications. First they blocked applications like kazaa(lite), later they also blocked bittorrent and Ares.

Many univesity networks block file sharing applications. Wouldn't it be interesting to explain in this article how they block these applications, explain possible solutions to cicumvent this and list applications which might still work? Especially students don't have a lot of money, so especially for them this blocking is nasty.

193.190.253.148 20:46, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Article move to peer-to-peer (computing)

I'm proposing to move this article to peer-to-peer (computing).

I believe that most people that type in 'peer to peer' expect to get to a file sharing article, but will reach this article, which is a fine article on peer-to-peer, but is about a computer networking technology that most people probably won't understand or care that much about (regrettably).

I think we need peer-to-peer to redirect to file sharing and include disamb links back to peer-to-peer (computing).

I'm not completely happy with it, but it seems the right thing to do.

File sharing contains billions of links to peer-to-peer anyway, so we're breaking it to them gently. WolfKeeper 12:47, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't share your belief that "most people that type in 'peer to peer' expect to get to a file sharing article." That isn't what "peer-to-peer" means. It's likely that most people familiar with the term associate it with file sharing, but that doesn't mean that they regard the two concepts as one and the same. —David Levy 12:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately in English, if people use the term in a particular way then that's what it means.WolfKeeper 13:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

As stated above, I dispute your assertion that most people use the term "peer-to-peer" to mean "file sharing." It commonly refers to a technology used for file sharing. —David Levy 13:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The technology documented in the article is what is used for file sharing. It isn't as though we're sending people to an article about some other definition of the term "peer-to-peer." We're presenting an article that provides useful information about the relevant technology. —David Levy 12:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Not really, not in the way that they can usually understand.WolfKeeper 13:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

My point is that this article documents precisely the technology that is used for file sharing (not some unrelated concept). I don't know how many people understand the technical aspects, but reading an encyclopedia article is a good way to learn. —David Levy 13:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The file sharing article is linked at the top of the page. If that's what the reader seeks, it's one click away. —David Levy 12:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't think they always know what they seek, and when they don't know, they probably want the file sharing article. The article needs to take them to the page that is likely to be most informative, which in this case is probably file sharing. Let's face it, that's what 99.99% of the time people use term to mean and use the technology for right now.WolfKeeper 13:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Obviously, I disagree. Can you cite a source for this "99.99%" statistic? —David Levy 13:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The title Peer-to-peer (computing) doesn't make sense, as it implies that the parenthetical term serves as disambiguation from one or more non-computing-related definitions of the term "peer-top-peer." This is misleading and unhelpful. —David Levy 12:55, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately for you, there already is a peer-to-peer (disambiguation) page, so that's untrue. The term already has multiple meanings.WolfKeeper 13:04, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

If the disambiguation page were located at the title Peer-to-peer, this would be a valid setup. But you redirected Peer-to-peer to an article pertaining to the very same computing-related definition of the term. It doesn't make sense to use the word "computing" to differentiate an article from one about computing. —David Levy 13:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

In any case I'm moving it to Peer-to-peer (computing) but leaving the redirect in place right now. The title helps explain the area of discourse at the very least and is more accurate.WolfKeeper 13:15, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

1. This is a contested move. Why did you bother proposing it above if you were just going to reinstitute it before receiving any outside feedback (let alone establishing consensus)?

2. We use parenthetical disambiguation only as necessary. We don't redirect Foo to Foo (disambiguating term), as this is entirely pointless. And how is Peer-to-peer (computing) "more accurate"? —David Levy 13:35, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

With all due respect David, I don't really think you're looking at it from the point of view of the users of the encyclopedia; you're looking at it from a purely technical point of view. To give an example, try doing a google on 'peer to peer'. You should find a number of pages came up, and most of them will be using the term 'peer to peer' to mean file sharing, although a very few might be about Skype. In particular the news organisations such as the BBC use peer to peer to mean file sharing. The file sharing article talks about peer to peer implementations almost exclusively anyway. For people unfamiliar with the term they probably want the file sharing article. For people mostly familiar with the term, they probably want file sharing. For computer experts and people who are more technically oriented (like me), they want Peer-to-peer (computing) which would be a single click away. I regret the news organisations error.WolfKeeper 14:03, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree with your interpretation of the available data. File sharing is the most common application of peer-to-peer technologies, so it makes sense that the term "peer-to-peer" is most often used in a context pertaining to file sharing. This does not mean that it's being used to mean "file sharing." I frequently see the phrases "peer-to-peer file sharing" and "P2P file sharing," which clearly convey an understanding that the two concepts are closely related but not one and the same. —David Levy 14:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The News organizations could have used 'file sharing' very easily, but have chosen not to. You might like to consider why that is. I think by making this change we would be following current usage, while emphasising the fact that we don't consider it entirely accurate. This would hopefully have a positive impact on the terminology used in future, but I wouldn't like to bet on it, and that's not why I would be doing it. In any case I think that the current article positions are not very helpful.WolfKeeper 15:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

1. I provided links to Google searches for "peer-to-peer file sharing" (about 849,000 hits as of 17:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)) and "P2P file sharing" (about 1,270,000 hits as of 17:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)). Why is it so common to use the terms together? Are people saying "file sharing file sharing"?

2. Here is a link to a Google News search for "file sharing." That there are 3,837 hits (as of 17:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)) contradicts your assertion that the news organizations "have chosen not to" use this term. —David Levy 17:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Why the heck did you just perform a copy-and-paste move?! —David Levy 13:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Well? —David Levy 14:19, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I still await your explanation. —David Levy 17:10, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Asynchronous file transfer with p2p?

Are there any P2P protocols suited to file transfer between two users like ftp only asynchronously? For example, user A wants to send a file to user B but B is offline. A sends anyway, B comes online later and receives the file. Pgr94 (talk) 16:48, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Attacks on P2P networks section

I removed this section; it was a near-verbatim duplicate of a section in the File sharing article; since this information all appears to be specific to P2P file-sharing apps as opposed to P2P as a networking concept in general, it seems more appropriate to have it in that article. There were two sentences at the end of the section in this article that weren't in the file-sharing article; I've inserted those in the FS article for now, althought they're unsourced and kind of vague, so they maybe should just be deleted entirely.

evildeathmath 16:00, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Sources?

Added Source for "Advantages of p2p", found via google link. I think this is correct. Not sure though if there is permission to reproduce this, although it's only 1 paragraph long and i don't think i could put it better myself. silvarbullet1 (talk) 00:47, 26 May 2008 (UTC)