Messages can be broadcasted, which means they are sent to all directly connected hosts by each peer. For example, pings or file search requests.

Messages can also be routed, which means they will be sent only to a particular location, after traveling through a chain of other peers.

Since the topography of a P2P network is semi-random and cyclic, a cache of recent identifiers unique for each message, and a decreasing TTL value in the P2P protocol can be used to prevent circulating redundant messages.


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