# Does anyone know what the first popular peer to peer filesharing network was?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-what-the-first-popular-peer-to-peer-filesharing-network-was/139155>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 27, 2002, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-what-the-first-popular-peer-to-peer-filesharing-network-was/139155 "2002-11-27T17:51:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![bcullman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bcullman/32/8207_2.png) [@bcullman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bcullman)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2002, 7:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-what-the-first-popular-peer-to-peer-filesharing-network-was/139155/21 "2002-11-29T07:19:47Z")

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I think Hotline (originally available on the mac, eventually available on the PC as well) was around for years before napster (which isnt really p2p anyway)

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**Author:** ![Mr.A.Nemo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/94ad74/32.png) [@Mr.A.Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.A.Nemo)\
**Post date:** [November 29, 2002, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-what-the-first-popular-peer-to-peer-filesharing-network-was/139155/22 "2002-11-29T15:06:52Z")

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DCC over IRC?

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**Author:** ![micco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f8ce5/32.png) [@micco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/micco)\
**Post date:** [December 2, 2002, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-anyone-know-what-the-first-popular-peer-to-peer-filesharing-network-was/139155/23 "2002-12-02T14:11:47Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Derleth \*  
> \*\*I guess the OP asked a trick question. There _hasn’t_ been a popular P2P filesharing network. Some have come closer than others, though. \*\*

The article you cited earlier concludes that Napster is P2P. To quote that article:

> [@](#):
>
> Napster is P2P, because the addresses of Napster nodes bypass the DNS system, and because once the Napster server resolves the IP addresses of the PCs hosting a particular song, it shifts control of the file transfers to the nodes. Furthermore, the ability of the Napster nodes to host the songs without central intervention lets Napster users get access to several terabytes of storage and bandwidth at no additional cost.

It also concludes that ICQ, Jabber, and a number of other apps are P2P based on its definitions. I’m sure you could play with the definitions so that no application is labeled P2P if it’s more complicated that two computers physically hardwired together in a peer network with no central lookup or registry, but is that definition really useful? The article you cited seems to use a definition which allows some central lookup to locate nodes but then the main functions of the app are performed directly between peers.

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