P2P.NET : a peer-to-peer platform for the Microsoft .NET framework

Abstract

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing has become one of the most popular computing paradigms of the past few years. This can be mainly attributed to the revolution it has brought with regards to the architecture of the Internet, whereby Internet applications with P2P capabilities ceased to make any distinction between server nodes and client nodes. Rather, each node visible on the Internet is regarded as a peer, thus giving potentially equal capabilities to all nodes at the very edges of the Internet. This dissertation describes the implementation of a P2P platform for the Microsoft .NET Framework. This P2P platform is essentially the middleware on top of which P2P applications could be built. This P2P platform was designed in such a way so as to provide the same flexibility exhibited by other currently popular P2P platforms like JXTA. This flexibility was achieved by constructing a standard API that allows custom modules called services to be seamlessly plugged into the platform as desired. The architecture of this P2P platform also imposes no restrictions upon the overlay network topology used by P2P applications - in fact this decision is left to the P2P application designer. And finally, this P2P platform was also designed to provide the unique feature of distinguishing between the different network links which conceptually exist between peers, something which cannot be found in other popular P2P platforms.