Peer-to-Peer Networks

Information Assurance and Security Ethics in Complex Systems - Advances in Information Security, Privacy, and Ethics ◽

10.4018/978-1-61692-245-0.ch005 ◽

2010 ◽

pp. 81-103

Author(s):

Nicolas Christin

Keyword(s):

Ethical Issues ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Consumer Electronics ◽

The Other ◽

Peer Networks ◽

Peer To Peer Networks ◽

Legal Challenges ◽

Beneficial Uses ◽

Software Distribution ◽

The One

Peer-to-peer networks are one of the main sources of Internet traffic, and yet remain very controversial. On the one hand, they have a number of extremely beneficial uses, such as open source software distribution, and censorship resilience. On the other hand, peer-to-peer networks pose considerable ethical and legal challenges, for instance allowing exchanges of large volumes of copyrighted materials. This chapter argues that the ethical quandaries posed by peer-to-peer networks are rooted in a conflicting set of incentives among several entities ranging from end-users to consumer electronics manufacturers. The discussion then turns to the legal, economic, and technological remedies that have been proposed, and the difficulties faced in applying them. The last part of the chapter expands the scope of ethical issues linked to peer-to-peer networks, and examines whether existing laws and technology can mitigate new threats such as inadvertent confidential information leaks in peer-to-peer networks.

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Adaptation: Tracking the Ecologies of Music and Peer-to-Peer Networks

Media International Australia ◽

10.1177/1329878x0511400105 ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 114 (1) ◽

pp. 30-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Kate Crawford

Keyword(s):

Peer To Peer ◽

Frame Of Reference ◽

The Other ◽

Peer Networks ◽

Music Downloading ◽

Production And Consumption ◽

Peer To Peer Networks ◽

Adaptation Tracking ◽

The Media

The media debate surrounding music downloading has reached a point of unproductive polarisation. Much of the commentary from peer-to-peer companies on one hand, and from the music industry on the other, has been highly customised rhetoric. This rhetoric commonly uses a discourse of ‘us versus them’ as the limited frame of reference: industry versus pirates, or legitimate practices versus illegitimate practices. Such claims deny the complexity of both the music-sharing phenomenon and the copyright developments related to it, effectively obscuring any legal, philosophical and technical intricacies and masking the networked interrelationships between the production and consumption of creative works. This paper seeks to move beyond these oppositional terms to consider the emerging ‘technological ecologies’ of peer-to-peer networks, the role of encryption, copyright recontextualisation and the ‘mash-up’, and the emergence of what media theorist Bernard Schütze calls ‘remix culture’.

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An Improved Hybrid Peer-to-Peer System with Caching for Distributed Data Sharing

International Journal of Smart Sensor and Adhoc Network. ◽

10.47893/ijssan.2012.1062 ◽

2012 ◽

pp. 193-199

Author(s):

Arpana George

Keyword(s):

Data Sharing ◽

System Performance ◽

Overlay Networks ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

The Other ◽

Peer Networks ◽

Distributed Data ◽

Peer To Peer Networks ◽

Caching Scheme ◽

Regular Topology

Peer-to-peer overlay networks are widely used in distributed systems. Based on whether a regular topology is maintained among peers, peer-to-peer networks can be divided into two categories: structured peer-to-peer networks in which peers are connected by a regular topology, and unstructured peer-to-peer networks in which the topology is arbitrary. Structured peer-to-peer networks usually can provide efficient and accurate services but need to spend a lot of effort in maintaining the regular topology. On the other hand, unstructured peer-to-peer networks are extremely resilient to the frequent peer joining and leaving but this is usually achieved at the expense of efficiency. The objective of this work is to design a hybrid peer-to-peer system for distributed data sharing which combines the advantages of both types of peer-to-peer networks and minimizes their disadvantages. Also a caching scheme is proposed for the hybrid peer-to-peer system to improve the system performance.

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On the Stability of Peer-to-Peer Networks in Real-World Environments

Encyclopedia of Information Communication Technology ◽

10.4018/978-1-59904-845-1.ch082 ◽

2009 ◽

pp. 622-630

Author(s):

Zoltán Czirkos ◽

Gábor Hosszú

Keyword(s):

Computer Networks ◽

Real World ◽

Network Traffic ◽

Peer To Peer ◽

Central Point ◽

The Other ◽

Peer Networks ◽

Client Server ◽

Peer To Peer Networks ◽

The Stability

Communication in computer networks can be organized in two different ways, according to the client/ server model and the peer-to-peer model (Spinellis & Androutsellis-Theotokis, 2004). In the client/server model, the network is centralized. There is one host on the network, the server, which provides services to its clients. Its network address is usually well-known. On the other hand, in the peer-to-peer model, there is no central point in the network. Hosts participating are sometimes called “servents” (Gnutella, 2006), as they act both as servers and as clients at the same time: they provide services to other servents, while they also use the services of others. Nodes in unstructured peer-to-peer networks usually communicate via message flooding. For example, a search request for a given file in the Gnutella network is sent to all neighboring servents. However, this solution is not scalable, and it generates a lot of unnecessary network traffic.

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