The language of P2P

Can anyone please recommend a site which explains the jargon of P2P in
simple terms. Things such as the distinguishing features of a "leaf node"
and why my client downloads 260% of a chunk.

Thanks,

Doug.
--
Registered Linux user No. 277548.
Linux: in a world without fences, who needs Gates?

Doug Laidlaw wrote:
> Can anyone please recommend a site which explains the jargon of P2P in
> simple terms. Things such as the distinguishing features of a "leaf node"
> and why my client downloads 260% of a chunk.

Doug,

This depends on the very p2p application in question.

My experience is that most of the p2p things are very poorly designed
and that they seem to be hastily hacked into executable code. This
would explain >100% downloads and other "features".

Anyways, try to find documentation about the application in question
or dig into the source. Or, try to contact the authors.


Cheers, Jack.

--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
My personal reading of the string "MicroSoft" expands to "NanoWeak"...

On Thu, 17 Jul 2003 22:54:33 +1000, Doug Laidlaw wrote:

> Can anyone please recommend a site which explains the jargon of P2P in
> simple terms. Things such as the distinguishing features of a "leaf
> node"

Imagine the following network:

A <-> B <-> C
^
|
v
D

A, C, and D all pass messages to each other *through B*, so B is not
a leaf node. A, C, and D are leaf nodes.

Imagine this more complicated network:

A <-> B <-> C
^
|
v
D <-> E <-> F
^
|
v
G

Note that D is connected to multiple other computers, but it is still
a leaf node - unless one of the (A,B,C) computers sends a message to one
of the (E,F,G) computers, or vice versa, and the message goes through D.

> and why my client downloads 260% of a chunk.

Your client initially planned to download part of the file from each of
several peers (each of which has an identical copy of the file). During
the download, some of the peers get cut off, so the client goes to Plan B
and downloads more from the remaining peers than originally planned. It
deliberately reports "260%" so that you can tell that this has happened.