Patent ID: 7203741

Claim:
A method of accelerating receipt of data in a peer-to-peer network, wherein a first client of the network operates a software program which implements a query to at least two other clients and each of said at least two other clients of the network provides solely a portion of a response to the query, whereby the response to the query includes a plurality of response portions to the first client from the at least two other clients, the method comprising: (a) monitoring, at an acceleration server operatively connected to the peer-to-peer network, all communications on a communication channel to and from said first client to identify communications containing said query and said response portions; (b) intercepting, from among all said communications on said communication channel, the query and the response portions to the first client from the at least two other clients, wherein said intercepting is performed by said acceleration server and is transparent to said first client and to said at least two other clients; (c) aggregating by said acceleration server the response portions into the response from the at least two other clients; and (d) transmitting at least a portion of the response from said acceleration server transparently to the first client.