Peer Discovery

What Does Peer Discovery Mean?

Peer discovery is the process of locating nodes or peers for data communication in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network. It is performed by a P2P client, which uses protocols and other network communication techniques to find peers within local and remote networks.

Techopedia Explains Peer Discovery

Peer discovery is used to find peers that are available for data or file transfer in a P2P network. Such peers can be within a local network or on a remote network. Typically, P2P networks create an overlay logical network on top of a physical network. This logical network enables peer discovery and consists of all P2P network nodes.

Local peer discovery is a protocol used with the BitTorrent® file sharing/downloading client, which enables the discovery of other BitTorrent peers.

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Margaret Rouse

Technology Specialist

Margaret is an award-winning writer and educator known for her ability to explain complex technical topics to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles in the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret’s idea of a fun day is to help IT and business professionals to learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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