Investigating peer-to-peer systems for resource sharing within a small group of nodes

We present a study of existing peer-to-peer systems and suggest a preliminary solution for implementing a file-sharing application for use by small trusted groups of users, for example 50-200 nodes. We review existing literature on peer-to-peer systems, and application examples of peer-to-peer architectures. We describe two models. One estimates the expected number of query results in a hybrid data-sharing peer-to-peer system, the other determines file replication needs for ensuring file availability for small numbers of users. We use information obtained from these models to design a file sharing system for small numbers of users.