P2P File Sharing

File sharing is the public or private sharing of computer data or space in a network with various levels of access privilege. While files can easily be shared outside a network (for example, simply by handing or mailing someone your file on a diskette), the term file sharing almost always means sharing files in a network, even if in a small local area network. File sharing allows a number of people to use the same file or file by some combination of being able to read or view it, write to or modify it, copy it, or print it.

 

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network of nodes.

According to File sharing joins the mainstream by CHRIS NUTTALL. Financial Times. Oct 17, 2007., examples of P2P file sharing are BitTorrent, content delivery networks (CDNs), and Azureus. These shares the load, and the speed that the file can be downloaded can increase sharply as more users download it. This is unlike previous methods, where things slow down the more downloaders use up limited bandwidth trying to access a file stored on a single server.