P2P networks for website hosting
Decentralized
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Many users associate the term P2P with BitTorrent and the (not always legal) exchange of files. But peer-to-peer networks offer an option for anonymously offering websites and other services. We examine five popular alternatives for P2P networking.
If a web server on the World Wide Web fails, its pages are no longer accessible. Administrators try to compensate for this problem with redundant systems, but duplicating an entire web infrastructure involves high maintenance overhead. At the same time, the data typically crosses the wire without encryption; and even if you use SSL/TLS encryption, third parties can still identify the sender and recipient.
Several projects try to remove both of these disadvantages with hybrid and pure peer-to-peer (P2P) approaches. Much like file sharing via BitTorrent, these websites are not hosted on a central server. Instead, clients connected to the web serve up the web pages.
Some providers distribute the data across multiple network nodes. If a client disappears off the network, the data is still available. Because the projects also consistently encrypt the traffic, none of the participants can eavesdrop on the communications of others. The provider of the web pages and the users thus remain anonymous.
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