Queries are not sent to a central site, but are instead distributed among the peers. These systems establish an overlay network of peers. These centralized systems have been replaced by new decentralized systems such as Gnutella that distribute both the download and search capabilities. But RIAA s lawsuit forced Napster to shut down, and its various centralized-search successors have faced similar legal challenges.

The resulting system was widely acknowledged as the fastest growing Internet application ever . By centralizing search (which does not require much bandwidth) while distributing download (which does), Napster achieved a highly functional hybrid design. Napster used a centralized search facility based on le lists provided by each peer. Making Gnutella-like P2P Systems Scalable Yatin Chawathe AT&T Labs Research Sylvia Ratnasamy Intel Research Lee Breslau AT&T Labs Research Nick Lanham UC Berkeley Scott Shenker ICSI over, such P2P le-sharing systems are self-scaling in that as more peers join the system to look for les, they add to the aggregate download capability as well.2 However, to make use of this self-scaling behavior, a node looking for les must nd the peers that have the desired content. Making gnutella-like P2P systems scalable Making gnutella-like P2P systems scalableĬhawathe, Yatin Ratnasamy, Sylvia Breslau, Lee Lanham, Nick Shenker, Scott

Gnutella 2 p2p