Search techniques in peer to peer networks

Abstract: Peer to peer (P2P) networks are an overlay on IP network of the internet and they can shape the future of computing by their involvement in distributed systems with the increased of use of low priced personal computers to form big clusters of distributed systems. An important problem for P2P networks and models is searching for data in the network which can be the basis of any service that uses such a network. Here we explore the major types of P2P networks and their solution to such a problem and we explore improvements that happened to these networks to be more appealing for commercial usage by offering features of load balancing, scalability, self organization and fault tolerance.