| 摘要 |
<p>The present invention relates to a virtual peer for a peer-to-peer (P2P) content sharing system. In general, the virtual peer is a logical construct enabling a number of virtual peer members to appear as a single peer node in the P2P content sharing system. In operation, a sponsoring agent creates the virtual peer and registers the virtual peer with the P2P network. Once registered, the virtual peer appears as a new peer node in the P2P network. In order to provide efficient content sharing, the sponsoring agent operates to obtain metadata describing all or a portion of a number of digital assets shared by the virtual peer members and aggregate the metadata into a single collection of metadata, referred to herein as a metadata catalog, for the virtual peer and may cache all or a portion of the digital assets shared by the virtual peer members.</p> |
