What is a .P2P file?
The file extension .P2P stands for a FolderShare Placeholder File. This type of file is essentially a shortcut or link used by a program called FolderShare, which was part of Windows Live services. FolderShare was designed to help synchronize files across multiple computers.
A .P2P file does not contain the actual data of the file it represents. Instead, it stores information that points to where the real file is located on another device. This is particularly useful when using FolderShare's On Demand Sync feature. With On Demand Sync, the .P2P files allow users to see placeholders of the files without downloading them until they are needed. When you double-click a .P2P file in FolderShare, the actual file it refers to is then downloaded from another computer to the one you are using.
To open a .P2P file, you would have used Microsoft FolderShare. However, it's important to note that FolderShare was acquired by Microsoft in 2005 and later replaced by a service called Windows Live Sync. Therefore, modern programs that originally opened .P2P files might no longer be available or supported.
It's also worth mentioning that the term "P2P" is commonly known as an abbreviation for "peer-to-peer," which is a type of network arrangement used for sharing files directly between systems on the internet. However, this general use of "P2P" is not related to the .P2P file extension used by FolderShare. Most peer-to-peer file sharing applications do not use the .P2P file extension.
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