Peer-to-peer networking has caused a dramatic increase in Internet traffic. Depending on the analysis methodology, P2P networking accounts for 60 to 89 percent of all Internet traffic.
P2P uses the computing power at the edge of a connection rather than within the network. The concept of clients or servers does not exist. Instead, peer nodes function as both clients and servers to other network nodes.
Although pure P2P networks exist, almost all efficient P2P networks use a hybrid approach in which the critical applications of indexing and searching are implemented in a client/server form, and data transfer is accomplished in a P2P manner. This technology is analogous to a router's use of a route or table look-up processor and multiple forwarding processors.
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