Peer-to-Peer Internet applications have recently been popularized through file sharing applications like Napster, Gnutella, FreeNet etc. Within these applications the Peer-to-Peer networking concept is mainly used to share files, i.e. the exchange of diverse media data, like music, films and programs. The growth in the usage of these applications is enormous and even more rapid than the growth of the World Wide Web.

While much of the attention has been focused on the copyright issues of the shared content, the concept of Peer-to-Peer architectures offers many other interesting and significant research aspects. Due to its main design principle of being completely decentralized and self organizing – opposed to the Internet’s “traditional” Client-Server paradigm – the Peer-to-Peer-concept emerges to a major design pattern for future applications, system components and infrastructural services, particularly with regard to scalability and resilience. The perspective of Peer-to-Peer networking offers new challenges, e.g. building scalable and resilient networks and a fast deployment of new services. Based on the decentralized Peer-to-Peer approach new Internet services can be deployed very fast and without spending time-consuming efforts in the process of standardization.

The goal of this Dagstuhl Seminar is to assemble researchers being highly active in the area of Peer-to-Peer mechanisms and networking (1) to reflect on recent research activities, (2) to identify key research issues, i.e. major challenges and (3) to set-up a Peer-to-Peer community in research.

The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Novel Peer-to-Peer applications and systems
• Peer-to-Peer service development
• Peer-to-Peer infrastructure and overlay networks
• Protocols for discovering, management and/or scheduling of resources
• Measurements issues and performance behavior of Peer-to-Peer systems
• Dependability and reliability in P2P networks (fault tolerance, scalability, availability, accessibility, security)
• Anonymity and anti-censorship
• Workload characterization for Peer-to-Peer systems
• Peer-to-Peer mechanisms using other resources than data

The increasing number of research efforts in the area of Peer-to-Peer-networking indicate that there is an enormous interest in and potential for Peer-to-Peer research. This seminar will bring together world-wide leading researchers with next-generation scientists in order to communicate a good picture of the state-of-the-art and to point out directions of future research.