Patent ID: 8560654

Claim:
A peer-to-peer (P2P) system for providing a change management (CM) service to at least one client therein, comprising: a syndication feed operable to provide a notification of the CM service to the at least one client, wherein the CM service is to change a software configuration of the at least one client; a host operable to provide the CM service to the at least one client in the P2P system; the at least one client is operable to receive the syndication feed, determine whether the received syndication feed is authentic and, based on the syndication feed determined to be authentic, determine from information in the notification describing the CM service whether the CM service notified through the syndication feed is a CM service that is to be performed by the at least one client; if the CM service notified through the syndication feed is determined to be the CM service that is to be performed by the at least one client, the at least one client is operable to send a request to the host for the CM service; wherein the host is operable to receive the request from the at least one client and, based on a download policy, selectively download the requested CM service to the client or, based on a threshold number of downloads having occurred of the CM service, redirect the at least one client to another client in the P2P system for the requested CM service; and wherein the P2P system is a torrent-based P2P system and wherein the syndication feed provides location information of the CM service in a torrent file, and the syndication feed provides information about the torrent file to the at least one client to enable the at least one client to receive the CM service; wherein each torrent file corresponds to a change in software configuration.