Compare and contrast between client/server and peer-to-peer networks. what are some of the business benefits of using such networks? support your answer with examples.

Client/Server and Peer-to-Peer networks are the two major network architecture models in use today. They each have advantages and disadvantages that can be used to benefit a particular outcome.

Briefly, the client/server model relates to one or many client performing relatively simple requests, which are then executed by a server. The server is performing more complex tasks, and often interacting with many clients simultaneously. Examples of client/server models include most websites, including the page you are running right this instant. Your web browser is acting as a client, and the website is running as a web server. It receives simple requests or information from your browser, such as clicking on a question or text typed by your keyboard, and then acts on this information by consulting a database, returning values, or returning a whole new web page to your browser. The client/server model is very powerful in business as it allows powerful and secure server-side processing and relatively simple clients. Office 365 that runs all microsoft office suites such as word and excel in a web browser on 'the cloud' is an example of a highly sophisticated client/server architecture.

By contrast, peer-to-peer networks are a distributed architecture of equals. Instead of a simple client and complex server, all clients are equals and link together to form nodes on a distributed network. There is no central control (server) and each node acts as a client and server to other nodes. This is also an extremely powerful network; as there is no central control it is difficult to shut down a peer-to-peer network. Taking out one node will not break the network in comparison to the client/server architecture where if the server goes down, services halt. Prime examples of famous peer-to-peer networks are the Bitcoin network and similar cryptographic currency networks, and music and file sharing networks such as Torrents. The torrent tracker websites are client/server however once a torrent is loaded into a torrent downloading application, the file is collectively downloaded from hundreds of 'peers' across the world as part of the torrent peer-to-peer network.