Starting with Napster and Gnutella, peer-to-peer systems became an integrated part of the Internet fabric attracting millions of users. According to recent evaluations, peer-to-peer traffic now exceeds Web traffic, once the dominant traffic on the Internet. While the most popular peer-to-peer applications remain file sharing and content distribution, new applications such as Internet telephony are emerging.
Within just a few years, the huge popularity of peer-to-peer systems and the explosion of peer-to-peer research have created a large body of knowledge, but this book is the first textbook-like survey to provide an up-to-date and in-depth introduction to the field.
This state-of-the-art survey systematically draws together prerequisites from various fields, presents techniques and methodologies in a principled and coherent way, and gives a comprehensive overview on the manifold applications of the peer-to-peer paradigm. Leading researchers contributed their expert knowledge to this book, each in his/her own specific area.
Lecturers can choose from the wide range of 32 tightly integrated chapters on all current aspects of P2P systems and applications, and thus individually tailor their class syllabi. R&D professionals active in P2P will appreciate this book as a valuable source of reference and inspiration.

Autorentext
Prof. Ralf Steinmetz worked for over nine years in industrial research and development of distributed multimedia systems and applications. Since 1996 he is the head of the Multimedia Communications Lab at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany. From 1997 to 2001 he directed the Fraunhofer (former GMD) Integrated Publishing Systems Institute IPSI in Darmstadt. In 1999 he founded the Hessian Telemedia Technology Competence Center (httc e.V.).
His thematic focus in research and teaching is on multimedia communications with his vision of real "seamless multimedia communications". With over 200 refereed publications he has become ICCC Governor in 1999; was awarded the ranking of Fellow of both, the IEEE in 1999 and the ACM in 2002.

Inhalt

Part I Peer-to-Peer: Notion, Areas, History and Future: What is this Peer-to-Peer about?- Past and Future.- Application Areas.- Part II Unstructured Peer-to-Peer Systems: First and Second Generation of Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Random Graphs, Small-Worlds and Scale-Free Networks.- Part III Structured Peer-to-Peer Systems: Distributed Hash Tables.- Selected DHT Algorithms.- Reliability and Load Balancing in DHTs.- P-Grid: Dynamics of Self-Organizing Processes in Structured P2P Systems.- Part IV Peer-to-Peer-Based Applications: Application-Layer Multicast.- ePost.- Distributed Computing - GRID Computing.- Web Services and Peer-to-Peer.- Part V Self-Organization: Characterization of Self-Organization.- Self-Organization in Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Part VI Search and Retrieval: Peer-to-Peer Search and Scalability.- Algorithmic Aspects of Overlay Networks.- Schema-Based Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Supporting Information Retrieval in Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Hybrid Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Part VII Peer-to-Peer Traffic and Performance Evaluation: ISP Platforms under a Heavy Peer-to-Peer Workload.- Traffic Characteristics and Performance Evaluation of Peer-to-Peer Systems.- Part VIII Peer-to-Peer in Mobile and Ubiquitous Environments: Peer-to-Peer in Mobile Environments.- Spontaneous Collaboration in Mobile P2P Networks.- Epidemic Data Dissemination for Mobile Peer-to-Peer Lookup Services.- Peer-to-Peer and Ubiquitious Computing.- Part IX Business Applications and Markets: Business Applications and Revenue Models.- Peer-to-Peer Market Management.- A Peer-to-Peer Framework for Electronic Markets.- Part X Advanced Issues: Security-Related Issues in Peer-to-Peer Networks.- Accounting in Peer-to-Peer Systems.- The PlanetLab Platform