A Framework for Classifying Peer-to-Peer Technologies

Popularized by Napster and Gnutella file sharing solutions, peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has suddenly emerged at the forefront of Internet computing. The basic notion of cooperative computing and resource sharing has been around for quite some time, although these new applications have opened up possibilities of very flexible web-based information sharing. This article provides a frame-work for classifying current and future P2P technologies. The main motivation for the classification is to identify basic characteristics of P2P applications so that the infrastructure to support P2P computing can concentrate on these basic characteristics.