The first international conference on Advances in P2P Systems, AP2PS 2009, Sliema, Malta, October 11-16, 2009

The First International Conference on Advances in Peer-to-Peer Systems (AP2PS 2009), held from October 11 to October 16, 2009 in Sliema, Malta, was built on the success of the First International Workshop on Computational P2P Networks (ComP2P 2008) but had a broader focus. AP2PS 2009 aimed at capturing the latest developments, findings and proposals in the general area of P2P computing, networking, services, and applications. The areas of interest included topics such as advances in theoretical foundations of P2P, performance analysis of P2P frameworks and applications, security, trust and reputation in P2P, time-constrained P2P systems, and quality of experience in P2P systems. Peer-to-peer systems have considerably evolved since their original conception, in the 90’s. The idea of distributing files using the user’s terminal as a relay has now been widely extended to embrace virtually any form of resource (e.g., computational and storage resources), data (e.g. files and real-time streams) and service (e.g., IP telephony, IP TV, collaboration). More complex systems, however, require more sophisticated management solutions, and in this context P2P can become an interesting issue, playing the hole of both the target and the enabler of new management systems.