Patent ID: 7426574

Claim:
A method of transferring a file in a peer-to-peer computer network, the method comprising: providing information to a first peer node that an interception node is a second peer node; redirecting the file from the first peer node to the interception node based on the provided information, the file originating from the first peer node and being originally intended to be transferred directly from the first peer node to the second peer node by peer-to-peer data transfer, the first peer node and the second peer node being computers in the peer-to-peer computer network; processing the file in the interception node, wherein the processing of the file in the interception node comprises scanning the file for viruses; querying a P2P server for location information of peer nodes involved in a transfer of the file; based on a response from the P2P server, identifying the second peer node as a node involved in the transfer of the file from the first peer node; and transferring the file from the interception node to the second peer node.