A peer-to-peer (or P2P) computer network is a network that relies primarily on the computing power and bandwidth of the participants in the network rather than concentrating it in a relatively low number of servers. P2P networks are typically used for connecting nodes via largely ad hoc connections.
Such networks are useful for many purposes but have different impact on end users and the Enterprise. File sharing, containing audio, video, data or anything in digital format is very common as well as realtime data, such as telephony traffic, is also passed using P2P technology.
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OneSwarm is a privacy-preserving P2P client developed at the University of Washington. Although backwards compatible with BitTorrent, it also includes new features designed to protect user privacy when sharing data among friends through creating a distributed darknet, so-called friend-to-friend sharing. Features include search, permissions, and a web UI with streaming, realtime transcoding, and remote access. To provide privacy, OneSwarm uses source-address rewriting with multi-path and multi-source downloading. OneSwarm is based upon the Azureus (Vuze) BitTorrent client.
