Peer to Peer: Collaboration and Sharing over the Internet

From Model to Reality

First of all, let’s summarize into a concise structure the conceptual models of p2p that were introduced in the historical overview in Chapter 1.

Of the many possible ways to structure the information about different conceptual models for information exchange using computers, Table 2.1 takes the perspective of client-server analysis. All the main client-server models are included to give context, while the shaded section in the middle of the table encompasses the established and accepted p2p architectures discussed in this book.

As used in the table, the term “index” means collections of logical links to distributed resources or data, while “directory” refers to collections of logical links to users. Not all applications ...