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by noobiemcfoob 2741 days ago
While you can frame peer-to-peer interactions as as a series of server-client interactions with servers and clients swapping roles... you shouldn't. It's a different paradigm with different implications.

Individual transactions might be usefully described as server-client, but the overall system is not server based. So...serverless.
1 comments
chatmasta 2741 days ago
In all cases, one node must send the first packet. The node sending the packet is the client, and the destination of the packet is the server.

Also, the internet is a peer-to-peer system. But "peer-to-peer" is an abstract paradigm, because ultimately, (a) two peers need to know about each other, and (b) one peer needs to initiate every transaction.

I realize we're just arguing semantics here, and I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make, but it's an interesting discussion nonetheless...

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clarry 2740 days ago
> In all cases, one node must send the first packet. The node sending the packet is the client, and the destination of the packet is the server.

I'm pretty sure you are just making up new definitions. It's kinda like saying that whoever says the first word in class is the teacher and the rest are student.

The fact is that both peers send packets and the first packet isn't particularly significant, except from a stateful connection or firewall perspective.

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chatmasta 2740 days ago
Well, let’s breakout Wikipedia [0]

> Clients therefore initiate communication sessions with servers which await incoming requests.

> Both client-server and master-slave are regarded as sub-categories of distributed peer-to-peer systems.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client–server_model

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clarry 2740 days ago
> Clients therefore initiate communication sessions with servers which await incoming requests.

Dogs walk on four feet, therefore anything that walks on four feet is a dog?

> Both client-server and master-slave are regarded as sub-categories of distributed peer-to-peer systems.

Dogs are canids, that doesn't mean all canids are dogs.

The client-server model really entails more than having one party that sends a packet before the other. Some illuminating details and a shallow comparison to the peer-to-peer architecture can be found in the article you linked.

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