P2P Attributes

• Point-to-Point communnication - directly addressing a peer.

• Cross-Linked Networks (aka 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon).
  Each peer is connected to other peers, etc. Each peer is only a few hops away from another.

• Broadcast Communication - Bus architecture.
  Messages are broadcast to all peers. Useful for discovery, events, and queries when only one peer may have an answer, but you don't know which. (TIBCO)
  

• Multipoint Communication.
  Somewhat like broadcasting, but multiple peers are sent multiple messages. Useful when broadcasting is desireable, but broadcasts may not reach all peers (firewalls and subnets).

• Network Graphs
  Description of the logical nework(s) of peers.

• Distributed Data Storage
  Each peer can store and share data and files.

• Bandwidth Reduction
  Decentralized topologies vs. hub and spoke, query caching, etc.

• Distributed Computing
  Share processing resources across peers.