An account of Peer to Peer and Overlay Networks

Abstract

Computing needs and environments today are much more complicated than when compared to the primitive networking methodologies. Hence an increased interest in Peer to Peer and Overlay networks has come about due to their self governance, scalability, robustness and localized control. In this paper I present a review of both peer to peer and overlay networks with an example each and give a viewpoint as to why overlay networks are better than peer to peer networks when it comes to scalability.

Keywords: Peer to Peer Networks, Overlay Networks, Distributed Hash Table, Time to Live, Decentralization