Peer-to-peer

From Cship

A Peer-to-peer (or Peer2peer) network is a computer network between equal peers. Unlike standard client-server networks there is no central server and so the traffic is distributed only among the clients.

This technology is mostly find in file sharing programs like Bittorrent, eMule and Gnutella. But also the very old Usenet technology or the VoIP programm Skype an be categorized as an Peer-to-peer system.

Because of the lack of one central server peer-to-peer networks are quite difficult to block. So there are several peer-to-peer networks for bypassing Internet censorship, like Freenet or MojoNation/MNet.

The web caches Dijjer and Coral (nyud.net) are also based on Peer-to-peer technology and can be used to bypass censorship.

[edit] Weblinks:

• Wikipedia on Peer-to-peer