p2pnet - rss feed: When ‘p2p’ isn’t a dirty word
P2p isn’t only about music and movies, a point which is usually left standing whenever the subject of file sharing comes up.
"We don’t even use the P2P word because it has such a bad connotation," Penn State University research programmer Michael Halm is quoted as saying in a USA TODAY story here.
But the negativity stops there because the story, by Jefferson Graham, has Halm saying the university is trying to create, "legitimate applications that enhance the way people work. And that’s P2P. It’s faster than a Web site or internal network and puts control into the hands of people who want to collaborate."
He goes on, "P2P has come a long way since 1999 when then-18-year-old Shawn Fanning invented Napster in his dorm room as a tool to find music MP3 files. Now music, movies, games and other huge - and usually copyrighted - files that once were impossible to trade between users flow freely among millions of powerful PCs being linked together.
"Halm would like to replicate that ease of use with academic data. That’s why Penn State is working with MIT and British Columbia’s Simon Fraser University on developing LionShare, an exchange of academic materials, using P2P for faster and more reliable sharing."
BigChampagne’s Eric Garland thinks p2p will become the "go-to platform, a way to share proprietary information for banking, insurance, all industries," the report continues. "It’s so efficient and robust, it will be applied to all types of online information."
Hype or reality? - Graham asks, and goes on to list examples:
* Data distribution. Companies including Contiki and Akamai use P2P technology to help companies deliver sales presentations and multimedia content.
* Grid computing. By linking a host of computers together to solve a problem, "You break the data into 1,000 pieces and solve the problem in a few days," says Andy Oram, an editor at computer book publisher O’Reilly & Associates.
* Distributed file systems. The files on a company network are broken into pieces and put into the P2P system, so if the server does go down, everyone’s computers can work together to reassemble the files.
* Collaboration software. BadBlue allows home users to set up their own P2P networks starting at $29.95 per user, $59.95 for businesses. Groove Networks is similar, targeted to business. Its software starts at $149.95.
"With a Web server, anyone who needs a piece of data has to contact one particular machine," says Adam Allison of BigChampagne. "With P2P, the media goes on multiple locations and can be accessed more quickly and efficiently."
And that’s what p2p is really all about.
