TOWARD A DEFINITION FOR PURE PEER-TO-PEER
In pure peer-to-peer there is no central router. Every node is a Peer. It is a total democratization of the peer group nodes. There are two general forms this architecture may take depending on how the routing is achieved:
* One possible routing structure is the distributed catalog. The router function, using indexes as parameters, searches a distributed catalog. This requires a dynamically balanced structure (to maintain equality for the memory burden among the peers).
* Another possible structuring is direct messaging which is relayed throughout the Peer group members until the object of the inquiry is found or until it is determined that no member of the horizon group has it. ('Horizon' indicates the limit of visibility from the node generating the query, etc.) Some implementations require preset limits to this visibility, others do not.
Whatever search method implemented is managed by the peer group management system that is cloned for the equality of each peer. In fact, it is the status of a particular installed operational P2PMS that defines the membership status with respect to the group.