The popularity of distributed file systems continues to grow. Reasons they are preferred over traditional centralized file systems include fault tolerance, availability, scalability and performance. In addition, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) system concepts and scalable functions are being incorporated into the domain of file systems. This survey paper explores the design paradigms and important issues that relate to such systems and discusses the various research activities in the field of Distributed Peer-to-Peer file systems.

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