Overview
A peer to peer (or "P2P") computer network uses diverse connectivity between participants in a network and the cumulative bandwidth of network participants
Details
Peer-to-peer or P2P as it is more commonly known has equal peer nodes that act as both clients and server at the same time. P2P uses connectivity to between many computers in a network and the collective bandwidth of all partakers rather than a central resource such as a server.
P2P networks are often used for file sharing such as audio, video and files. Telephony traffic also uses this technology to pass data through. Pure peer-to-peer networks have the peers acting as both the client and server. A pure peer-to-peer network also doesn’t have a central router or a central server, as mentioned previously.
Structured P2P networks are fairly common. They have a consistent protocol meaning that any peer can easily search for another peer that for example has the desired file. Unstructured P2P networks work differently in that the peer can, on joining the network, copy the existing links of an existing node and ultimately make its own links. Within an unstructured P2P network if a peer wishes to find a file then the query has to go through the network to find as many peers that it can that has the file to be shared.