Patent ID: 7849140

Claim:
A system, comprising: a plurality of nodes configured to couple to a network; a subset of the plurality of nodes configured to participate as peer nodes in a peer-to-peer environment on the network according to a peer-to-peer platform comprising one or more peer to-peer protocols for enabling the peer nodes to discover each other, to communicate with each other, and to share content in the peer-to-peer environment; wherein one of the plurality of peer nodes is configured to: receive an email message formatted according to an email communication protocol; determine one of the peer nodes as a destination peer node of the email message; generate a peer-to-peer message formatted in accordance with one of the peer-to-peer protocols by wrapping the email message in a wrapper generated according to the one of the peer-to-peer protocols, wherein the peer-to-peer message comprises the email message and the wrapper; and send the peer-to-peer message to the destination peer node in accordance with the peer-to-peer protocol, wherein the email message comprises a destination address, and wherein, to determine the one of the plurality of peer nodes as the destination peer node, the one of the plurality of peer nodes is configured to discover the destination peer node according to a peer discovery protocol using the destination address.