Thursday, January 27, 2011

INTRODUCTION TO "PEER TO PEER FILE SHARING" (P2P file sharing)

Peer to Peer file sharing has become one of the most popular way of sharing different contents like movies, songs ,softwares etc. on Internet. Many people don't even realize they are using P2P file sharing while downloading files using limewire or torrent client.
When we download something from a file sharing website or any other website we actually download the file from the website's server using the FTP protocol (FTP protocol are set of standard rules for file transfer) , now the servers have a bandwidth limit means there is a limit to the downloading speed, due to this the download speed can't go beyond a specific limit. This is called client server sharing. Downloading from popular sites can be fast, but there is always a limit.
Now lets take a look at P2P file sharing.Unlike centralized client-server sharing model P2P uses P2P networking for sharing contents. In P2P networking the users are directly connected to each other without any interference from any servers. Means the traffic does not pass through any servers. The users are called pears. All these peers are mostly equally privileged and act both as a client and server (consumer and supplier).

Bit-Torrent Protocol
In recent times the Bit-torrent P2P sharing has become very popular mainly due to sharing of pirated stuff like movies, songs and softwares. For using it, one needs a bit-torrent client software. In bit-torrent, the user who has the full file on his computer, which he provides to others is called a Seeder and the users who are downloading the file are called a Peers. Now unlike the
client server model the files are divided in parts, which peers download from seeders as well as other peers who have already downloaded the parts of file. The user can download the parts of file from many seeders and peers simultaneously, this tremendously increases the downloading speed. But for fast downloading there should be many seeders and peers present for that torrent (in short more the seeders and peers, more the downloading speed). Due to this, the downloading speed can go very high. Torrent Sites like piratebay and isohunt store the torrent files which contains information about the address of trackers (trackers are servers which coordinate the communication between the peers) and health of the torrent. The user have to download these torrent files and open them in their torrent client to start the download. Here are some famous free torrent clients.

Utorrent :- Its a very light weight and very easy to use bit-torrent client.
                   DOWNLOAD


BitTorrent :- One of the famous torrent client with large number of users
                      DOWNLOAD


Vuze :- Mostly popular in Europe.
             DOWNLOAD




P2P NETWORKS
P2P networks are networks of nodes formed by interconnected users. This users are mostly equally privileged. Peers make a portion of their resources, such as processing power, disk storage or network bandwidth, directly available to other network participants, without the need for central coordination by servers or stable hosts. This networks are extensively used for file sharing. Today there are many P2P networks with millions of regular users. For downloading from a P2P network the user needs a P2P network client. On startup the the client connects to some of the default nodes. When the user searches something these search is send to these nodes, if none of them have the file the nodes send the search request to other nodes, this goes on like a chain reaction till the file is found.
Gnutella is one of the largest and most famous P2P network with millions of user world wide. For connecting to gnutella network the user needs a gnutella client software. Here are two mostly used client software.


Limewire:- It is a P2P file sharing client program. It can be used for both gnutella and
                  bit-torrent. LimeWire is under a court order dated October 26, 2010 to stop
                  distributing the LimeWire software. But you can download it any way on torrent
                  DOWNLOAD (torrent link)



Shareaza :- Supports the gnutella, Gnutella2 (G2), eDonkey, BitTorrent, FTP and HTTP
                   network protocols and handles magnet links, ed2k links. 
                   DOWNLOAD

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2 Responses to “INTRODUCTION TO "PEER TO PEER FILE SHARING" (P2P file sharing)”

Aayan Bharat said...

The article on p2p is nice!!

mayur shett said...

@Aayan Bharat
Thanks man! i really appreciate your comment. The comments are the only things that energizes me to write this articles.

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