Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Technology

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology is a distributed network architecture that
allows data to be spread from computer to computer without a central
node. One of the major advantages of this type of setup is that as more
people log on and use the network, they add their resources (like
bandwidth), so the network scales automatically as demand increases —
meaning that the more people using P2P network, the faster it generally
becomes.

The idea rose to mainstream prominence in 1999 with the launch of
Napster, a P2P software product that allowed people to trade MP3 music
files with one another. Though the service was eventually litigated out
of business by music industry, it arguably changed the way music — and
later movies and other types of media — are distributed and paved the
way for the success of MP3 players like the iPod amd legitimate online
music stores like iTunes. Indeed, it can be argued that without P2P
network making the idea of trading MP3 files and movies over the
Internet commonplace, legitimate services that allow us to do things
like stream multimedia content and store entire music libraries on our
cell phones might have never been trade.

Today, P2P traffic accounts for anywhere from 27-55 percent of all
Internet traffic (depending on location), and popular peer-to-peer
protocols, such as BitTorrent, continue to influence everything from
music and film distribution to network architecture and Internet
legislation.