Submitted by
Koutarapu Naveen

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ABSTRACT
PEER-TO-PEER HARNESSING
The Internet is a shared resource, a cooperative network built out of millions of hosts all over the world. Today there are more applications than ever that want to use the network, consume bandwidth, and send packets far and wide. The increasing reliance in the Internet for critical applications has brought with it new security requirements, resulting in firewalls that strongly partition the Net into pieces. The network model that survived the enormous growth of the previous years has been turned on its head. What was down has become up; what was passive is now active. Through the file-sharing applications like Napster, Freenet, and the larger movement dubbed “Peer-to-Peer”(P2P), the millions of users connecting to the Internet have started using their ever more powerful home computers for more than just browsing the Web and trading email. Instead, machines in the home and on the desktop are connecting to each other directly, forming groups and collaborating to become user-created search engines, virtual supercomputers, and file systems. This was just like the original Internet systems design which over the time transformed client/server, with millions of clients and very few servers.
In P2P networks, all clients provide resources, which may include bandwidth, storage space, and computing power. As nodes arrive and demand on the system increases, the total capacity of the system also increases. This is not true of client-server architecture with a fixed set of servers, in which adding more clients could mean slower data transfer for all users.
The concept of P2P is increasingly evolving to an expanded usage as the relational dynamic active in distributed networks, i.e., not just computer to computer, but human to human. The term commons-based peer production was coined to denote collaborative projects such as free and open source software and Wikipedia. Associated with peer production are the concepts of peer governance, peer property and peer distribution.
Peer2Peer Introduction
P2P networking has generated tremendous interest worldwide among both Internet surfers and computer networking professionals. P2P software systems like Kazaa and Napster rank amongst the most popular software applications ever. Numerous businesses and Web sites have promoted "peer2peer" technology as the future of Internet networking.
Although they have actually existed for many years, P2P technologies promise to radically change the future of networking. P2P file sharing software has also created much controversy over legality and "fair use." In general, experts disagree on various details of P2P and precisely how it will evolve in the future.
Traditional Peer to Peer Networks
The P2P acronym technically stands for peer to peer. Webopedia defines P2P as
"A type of network in which each workstation has equivalent capabilities and responsibilities. This differs from client/server architectures, in which some computers are dedicated to serving the others."
This definition captures the traditional meaning of peer to peer networking. Computers in a peer to peer network are typically situated physically near to each other and run similar networking protocols and software. Before home networking became popular, only small businesses and schools built peer to peer networks.
Home P2P Networks
Most home computer networks today are peer to peer networks. Residential users configure their computers in peer workgroups to allow sharing of files, printers and other resources equally among all of the devices. Although one computer may act as a file server or Fax server at any given time, other home computers often have equivalent capability to handle those responsibilities.
Both wired and wireless home networks qualify as peer to peer environments. Some may argue that the installation of a network router or similar centerpiece device means that network is no longer peer to peer. From the networking point of view, this is inaccurate. A router simply joins the home network to the Internet; it does not by itself change how resources within the network are shared.
P2P File Sharing Networks
When most people hear the term "P2P", they think not of traditional peer networks, but rather peer to peer file sharing over the Internet. P2P file sharing systems have become the single most popular class of Internet applications in this decade.
A P2P network implements search and data transfer protocols above the Internet Protocol (IP). To access a P2P network, users simply download and install a suitable P2P client application.
Numerous P2P networks and P2P software applications exist. Some P2P applications work only with one P2P network, while others operate cross-network. Likewise, some P2P networks support only one application, while others support multiple applications.
Peer-to-peer is a communications model in which each party has the same capabilities and either party can initiate a communication session. Other models with which it might be contrasted include the client/server model and the master/slave model. In some cases, peer-to-peer communications is implemented by giving each communication node both server and client capabilities. In recent usage, peer-to-peer has come to describe applications in which users can use the Internet to exchange files with each other directly or through a mediating server. IBM's Advanced Peer-to-Peer Networking (APPN) is an example of a product that supports the peer-to-peer communication model.
On the Internet, P2P is a type of transient Internet network that allows a group of computer users with the same networking program to connect with each other and directly access files from one another's hard drives. Napster and Gnutella are examples of this kind of peer-to-peer software. Major producers of content, including record companies, have shown their concern about what they consider illegal sharing of copyrighted content by suing some P2P users.
Meanwhile, corporations are looking at the advantages of using P2P as a way for employees to share files without the expense involved in maintaining a centralized server and as a way for businesses to exchange information with each other directly.
How Does Internet P2P Work?
The user must first download and execute a peer-to-peer networking program. (Gnutellanet is currently one of the most popular of these decentralized P2P programs because it allows users to exchange all types of files.) After launching the program, the user enters the IP address of another computer belonging to the network. (Typically, the Web page where the user got the download will list several IP addresses as places to begin). Once the computer finds another network member on-line, it will connect to that user's connection (who has gotten their IP address from another user's connection and so on) and start exchanging the files.
i) Ares is a free P2P network with several supporting clients available. These client applications enable free file sharing over Ares P2P network protocols. "Ares P2P" is the name of a cross-platform P2P client offered at aresp2p.net
ii) Napster is peer-to-peer because the addresses of Napster nodes bypass DNS, and because once the Napster server resolves the IP addresses of the PCs hosting a particular song, it shifts control of the file transfers to the nodes.
iii) ICQ and Jabber are peer-to-peer, because they not only devolve connection management to the individual nodes after resolving the addresses, but they also violate the machine-centric worldview encoded in DNS.
Popular Power is peer-to-peer, because the distributed clients that contact the server need no fixed IP address and have a high degree of autonomy in performing and reporting their calculations. They can even be offline for long stretches while still doing work for the Popular Power network. Dynamic DNS is not peer-to-peer, because it tries to retrofit PCs into traditional DNS.