Introduction - Peer-to-Peer Computing: Applications, Architecture, Protocols, and Challenges - page 4

Large Population. A P2P system usually scales to a large number of users
(e.g., up to several millions of simultaneous users) and thus, data and/or
peer search has to be able to handle a large user population. Indeed,
when more users join, more resources are aggregated, and hence, can
support even more users. This is a very unique self-scaling effect of
a P2P system. As a result, some kind of hierarchy has to be used in
order to cope with the scalability issue. For instance, tracker servers are
commonly used for keeping track of data and peer locations.
The purpose of the topic is two-fold: (1) to introduce the existing applica-
tions and technologies employed; and (2) to motivate further research issues
involved.
1.2 Road Map
In Chapter 2, to set the stage for understanding the various important
research issues in P2P systems, we first introduce the various P2P network
architectures. In Chapter 3, we discuss the topology control research problem
in detail. In Chapter 4, we provide a detailed survey on the existing tech-
nologies for handling the topology control issues. In Chapter 5, we describe
various novel and interesting incentive schemes for enticing peers to cooperate.
In Chapter 6, we describe the recent innovations on trust issues. In Chapter
7, we focus on the security problems in a P2P network. We provide some
concluding remarks in the final chapter.
Throughout Chapters 2 to 7, we use the highly popular P2P IPTV appli-
cation PPLive [PPLive, 2009, Vu et al., 2010] as a case study to illustrate the
practical aspects of the concepts covered.