Larry,

The problem with peer to peer is simple.

1) The single most common cause of system crash is the user powering down or killing a task.
@) In a networked database system the machine storing the data is mission critical to the application.

Simply allowing a person to sit at an use the machine that stores the data is asking for trouble based on 1) and having a user at the database storage machine is inviting a problem that is system wide in nature.

It is much cheaper in the long run to spend a couple of thousand and buy a machine that can be the server without allowing anyone to work at that machine, ever, for any reason.