Abstract: Present invention embodiments pertain to managing inventory via a peer-to-peer (P2P) infrastructure. Inventory owners or providers employ modules (tailored to the type of inventory owned or provided) to automatically store the definition of the products and/or services of the inventory on the inventory provider computer system. Once the inventory is defined, the inventory provider computer system may automatically join a peer-to-peer (P2P) network, and publishes information about the inventory to enable access and transactions by other participants in the peer-to-peer network. The peer-to-peer network includes several different types of participating nodes with each node interconnected via encrypted links over the public Internet.