Beernet is a library to build distributed systems as peer-to-peer networks. It provides replicated storage with distributed transactions, which are highly robust because they do not rely on a centralized point of control. Beernet can be used to develop synchronous and asynchronous collaborative applications. We have used it to build a decentralized wiki, a collaborative drawing application with gPhone clients, and a web-base recommendation system.

Beernet stands for pbeer-to-pbeer network, where words peer and beer are mixed to emphasise the fact that this is peer-to-peer built on top of a relaxed-ring topology (beers are a known mean to achieve relaxation). The relaxed-ring provides a distributed hash table (DHT) with no central point of control and without relying on transitive connectivity between peers.