As an alternative to traditional client-server systems, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) systems provide major advantages in terms of scalability, autonomy and dynamic behavior of peers, and decentralization of control. Thus, they are well suited for large-scale data sharing in distributed environments. Most of the existing P2P approaches for data sharing rely on either structured networks (e.g., DHTs) for efficient indexing, or unstructured networks for ease of deployment, or some combination. However, these approaches have some limitations, such as lack of freedom for data placement in DHTs, and high latency and high network traffic in unstructured networks. To address these limitations, gossip protocols which are easy to deploy and scale well, can be exploited. In this book, we will give an overview of these different P2P techniques and architectures, discuss their trade-offs, and illustrate their use for decentralizing several large-scale data sharing applications.
