Peer exchange or PeX is a communications protocol that augments the BitTorrent file sharing protocol. It allows a group of users (or peers) that are collaborating to share a given file to do so more swiftly and efficiently.
In the original design of the BitTorrent file sharing protocol, peers (users) in a file sharing group (known as a "swarm") relied upon a central computer server called a tracker to find each other and to maintain the swarm. PEX greatly reduces the reliance of peers on a tracker by allowing each peer to directly update others in the swarm as to which peers are currently in the swarm. By reducing dependency on a centralized tracker, PEX increases the speed, efficiency, and robustness of the BitTorrent protocol.
Read more about Peer Exchange: Description, Versions, Clients Supporting Peer Exchange
Famous quotes containing the words peer and/or exchange:
“The Peer now spreads the glitt’ring Forfex wide,
T’inclose the Lock; now joins it, to divide.”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“I live in my house as I live inside my skin: I know more beautiful, more ample, more sturdy and more picturesque skins: but it would seem to me unnatural to exchange them for mine.”
—Primo Levi (1919–1987)