Peer-to-Peer Systems and Applications

Starting with Napster and Gnutella, peer—to—peer systems became an integrated part of the Internet fabric attracting millions of users. According to recent evaluations, peer—to—peer traffic now exceeds Web traffic, once the dominant traffic on the Internet. While the most popular peer—to—peer applications remain file sharing and content distribution, new applications such as Internet telephony are emerging.

Within just a few years, the huge popularity of peer—to—peer systems and the explos...