Peer-to-peer web hosting is using peer-to-peer networking to distribute access to webpages.[1] This is differentiated from the client–server model which involves the distribution of web data between dedicated web servers and user-end client computers. Peer-to-peer web hosting may also take the form of P2P web caches and content delivery networks.
Peer-to-peer web hosting does not differentiate between clients and servers, all nodes can request and respond to services. All Nodes can store data, they can both create and consume resources, meaning that a hosting's capacity to share resources will increase alongside the number of nodes present. Its often less costly than client-server web hosting. Peer-to-peer sharing is meant to help save bandwidth when sharing large files between two machines, as it is incredibly efficient at sharing data. This method can be risky due the lack of security, many files found and shared on peer-to-peer sites can be illegal or dangerous to your operating machine.
Client-server web hosting does differentiate between clients and servers, a central server is used to store data and respond to the services requested by a client. Client-server networks are more stable though they do start to fall off as client numbers increase. It's much easier to regulate data as all data is stored within the central web server and is accessible to the host.[2]
| Name | First release date | Anonymous | Fast | Per file edit rights | Per file read rights (P2P) | Offline compatible | FOSS implementation | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Freenet | 2000 | ||||||||
| Osiris | 2010 | ||||||||
| IPFS | 2014 | ||||||||
| Maelstrom | 2014 | ? | ? | ? | Project seems suspended since 2015[3] | ||||
| ZeroNet | 2015 | DHT | |||||||
| Dat | 2013 | ? | ? | Sites can be viewed in Beaker Browser, or in Firefox using an experimental add-on.[4] | |||||
| Blockstack[5] | 2015 | ? | ? | Uses the Stacks blockchain v1. |