a network that has no dedicated servers. all computers are of equal status and can both share resources themselves and use resources from other computers, ie they are peers.
peer-to-peer computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the application.
- no central server, no leaders - each computer has its own functions and may share resources within the network - easy to setup - each computer maintained individually