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The limitations of client/server systems become evident in an Internetscale distributed environment. P2P systems offer an alternative to traditional client/server systems: Every node acts both as a client and a server and “pays” its participation by providing access to its computing resources. Systems such as Napster and Gnutella have proven their practical applicability. In this article we briefly introduce the key concepts and properties of the P2P paradigm and overview commercial systems and research approaches.