From Tony Bradley, CISSP-ISSAP,
Your Guide to Internet / Network Security.
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Definition: Peer-to-Peer Networking (P2P) is a phrase coined to apply to individual PC's acting as servers to other individual PC's. Made popular by the music file swapping service Napster, P2P allows users to share files with each other through a network of computers using that same P2P client software. Each computer on the network has the ability to act as a server by hosting files for others to download as well as a client by searching other computers on the network for files they want.

Also Known As: Peer-to-Peer Networking