Introduction

Abstract

After a decade of intensive investigation, peer-to-peer computing has established itself as an accepted research eld in the general area of distributed systems. Peer-to- peer computing can be seen as the democratization of computing over throwing traditional hierarchical designs favored in client-server systems largely brought about by last-mile network improvements which have made individual PCs rst-class citizens in the network community. Much of the early focus in peer-to-peer systems was on best-effort le sharing applications. In recent years, however, research has focused on peer-to-peer systems that provide operational properties and functionality similar to those shown by more traditional distributed systems. These properties include stronger consistency, reliability, and security guarantees suitable to supporting traditional applications such as databases.