Legitimate Applications of Peer-To-Peer Networks
Chapter One
THE PEER-TO-PEER
ARCHITECTURE
In this chapter, we look at the general architecture of a peer-to-peer
system and contrast it with the traditional client-server architecture
that is ubiquitous in current computing systems. We
then compare the relative merits and demerits of each of these approaches
toward building a distributed system.
We begin the chapter with a discussion of the client-server and
peer-to-peer computing architectures. The subsequent subsections
look at the base components that go into making a peer-to-peer
application, finally concluding with a section that compares
the relative strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches.
1.1 DISTRIBUTED APPLICATIONS
A distributed application is an application that contains two or
more software modules that are located on different computers.
The software modules interact with each other over a communication
network connecting the different computers.
To build a distributed application, you would need to decide
how many software modules to include in the a ... read full excerpt from Legitimate Peer to Peer Network Applications: Beyond File and Music Swapping ebook
