peer-to-peer
termnetworkingprogramming
An architecture where every node is both client and server, providing resources to the others directly.
Peers discover each other and exchange without a central authority holding the data, which gives P2P its resilience and its bandwidth economics: the more participants, the more capacity, exactly inverting the client-server curve. BitTorrent, blockchain gossip, and Windows file sharing between two desktops are all the same model. The trade is governance, since there is no single place to enforce policy or revoke access.
Also known as: P2P, peer to peer