Abstract: Network coding is a field of information theory and coding theory and is a method of attaining maximum information flow in a network. Many researchers believe that network coding could help improve P2P network performance. But some other researchers still hold their views on this issue. Discussed here is the application of network coding to P2P content distribution system. It is concluded that network coding can be used to reduce the complexity of the piece selection in P2P content distribution, and to increase the utilization of the network resource. However, without being combined with good neighbor selection and chokingunchoking, its advantage can not be realized. Meanwhile, how to apply network coding to the P2P content distribution system is presented in detail with further discussion about primary implementation problems. To verify the feasibility of P2P content distribution system based on network coding, the main coding and decoding operation of network coding is implemented, and its system resource consumption is analyzed. Results are as follows: The coding operation consumes 2.25% of the CPU resource and 20MB of the memory resource while the upload rate is 50KBps. It is indicated that the system consumption of network coding is relatively low, and it is completely feasible to apply network coding to the P2P content distribution.