Redes Peer-to-Peer: um estudo sobre aspectos de segurança e mobilidade

Abstract

The P2P networks researches had started in the beginning of the 80’s, when new possibilities for files and resources sharing between different computers were identified, without a need of a central server. For example, sharing of memory and disk space. From this moment, new important projects were developed, like Napster, SETI@home, Gnutella and Jabber. Users from different places at Internet were able to change informations directly, making communities in the Internet without a need of a central server. However, the use of P2P networks and systems brought some problems. One of them was related to copyright issues, problem that reduced the use of file-sharing systems. For example Napster, who allowed users to change music files in a illegal way. Another important and present issue is related to security aspects. Some characteristics of these systems make them vulnerables of bad users attacks. It can cause just few damages to home users or big injuries to large companies, resulting in revenue loses. For this reason, there are a lot of concerns about internal processes in P2P systems, like connection control, authentication and operation issues.The use of mobile devices nowadays is resulting in new tendencies for P2P systems. New systems have been developed due to this tendencies, like “PocketSkype” (voice over IP protocol transmission, through a pocket PC) and “MobileMule” (file sharing through cell phones). This work describes the P2P networks and systems characteristics, considering the concerns about security issues and analysing the new tendenciesrelated to mobile aspects.