Right now I am working on a project which fully depends on peer-to-peer communication (ie, no centralized server) with no internet connection. I'm studying about peer-to-peer for the last week, I came to know about the mesh network things. It seems similar to P2P.
I want to know whether the P2P is a part of the mesh networking concept or they are the same? Is there any difference between these two?
As far as my research, it's really hard for me to find the thing I want. Can anyone explain it in a simple manner? Because what am I getting all the time is the same answer without a reference on what is the relation between these two.
P2P and mesh network are usually used when referring to concepts on different network layers.
A mesh network is a topology used to organize nodes into a network that can transmit data between nodes that are not in direct physical contact with each other. Different models on the same layer would be star (e.g. local ethernet setups) or hub-spoke topologies for example.
P2P on the other hand refers how endpoints talk to each other on the application layer, i.e. they connect to each other "directly" (abstracted over the underlying network layers of course) to exchange information. It contrasts with the client-server model, where a server would act as relay or storage for the data that clients read or write.