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Old Mar 9th, 2006, 10:57 AM   #9
Arevos
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jayme
You obviously don't understand how p2p works. ALL p2p networks require a centralized server.
This is incorrect. There are a great number of P2P networks that require no centralised server. In such P2P networks, the user must connect through an IP address of a node already on the network. Often, one can find a long list of almost-always-on nodes compiled by volunteers. When given such a list, the P2P program tries each IP address in turn until it succeeds in getting at least one connection. Once a connection has been made, the P2P program can then integrate itself in an ad-hoc fashion into the network.

However, the problem with the approach is that it requires a lot of redundancy. You need at least one of the peers on the list to accept connections. In a large P2P network with millions of nodes, and a list of thousands of "gateway" IP addresses, this poses no problem. On a smaller network, more problems arise.
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