The arrival of the P2P model has opened many new avenues for research within the field of distributed computing. This is mainly due to important practical features (such as support for volatility, high scalability). Several generic P2P libraries have been proposed for building higher-level services. In order to judge the appropriateness of using a generic P2P library for a given application type, an experimental performance evaluation of the provided functionalities is unavoidable. Very few analyses of this kind have been reported, as most evaluations are limited to complexity analyses and to simulations. Such experimental analyses are important, especially when using P2P software in a grid computing context, where applications may have precise efficiency requirements. In this paper, we focus on JXTA, which provides generic building blocks and protocols intended to serve as a basis for specialized P2P services and applications. We perform a performance evaluation of the three communication layers (endpoint, pipe and socket) over a fast Ethernet local-area network, for recent versions of the J2SE and C bindings of JXTA. We provide a detailed analysis explaining the behavior of these three layers and we give hints showing how to efficiently use them.