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New way-cool way: sharing files directly between personal
computers (client-to-client, or peer-to-peer).
Suddenly stupid way: files to be shared were saved/uploaded to a
central server, i.e. LAN, WAN, World Wide Web (client-to-server).
Hybrid way: Napster, which stores lists of names of available
files on a central computer, but the actual files are on its
users’ hard drives (client-to-server-to-client).
Here’s what our friends at Intel have to say about
peer-to-peer: "Peer-to-peer computing is a set of technologies
that enable the direct exchange of services or data between
computers. In such a business computing environment, servers,
desktops and notebook PCs in a network become peers that contribute
all or part of their resources - such as processing power or storage
- to the enterprise. This type of architecture transforms client
computers from mere consumers of services to service providers as
well. For example, an Information Technology (IT) department can tap
into a company's computers and use their collective computing power
and storage to perform data-intensive calculations or simulations
over a network without overloading the corporate infrastructure. As
the workload for servers in corporations continues to grow,
peer-to-peer computing can also be used to offload common server
tasks such as file serving or virus protection to other peers on a
network, allowing servers to focus on other tasks such as handling
business transactions."
Nothing about Napster, right? Right! One of the big benefits of
peer-to-peer technologies is the ability to link thousands of
computers together when they’re not being used, and harness all
that computational horsepower to do important work such as, er,
combing through radio signals from space to see if anyone’s trying
to send the extraterrestrial equivalent of Howard Stern back at us,
which is exactly what the SETI Project hopes to accomplish.
Another huge advantage of peer-to-peer is the end of remote
access. Instead of trying to log onto a network server while
traveling, peer-to-peer will let users link directly to all the PCs
in their company, not to mention their home machines. Search engines
will make it simple to find a file within the corporate network, and
no more busy signals or 14.4 modems that make you wait six hours to
download a single PowerPoint deck.
In case you really want to impress your date at the next
Cybersuds extravaganza, here are today’s six major peer-to-peer
categories and some of the players trying desperately to become the
Netscape, if not the AOL, of the category before someone gets smart
and spends $50 million on Napster for the name alone (a bargain
compared to the $3 billion AOL paid for the Netscape brand).
Public p2p networks: gives strangers access to a user’s
computer (Napster, Gnutella, Freenet, Dotcast, CuteMX, SpinFrenzy).
Business p2p networks: allows users within a controlled network
environment to exchange files (Engenia, GlobeDrive).
Private p2p networks: allows users to select and manage who is
allowed to access their computers (GlobeDrive).
Distributed resources: harnesses unused computing power in PCs
for large-scale projects a la SETI (Distributed Science, Entropia,
United Devices, Static, Popular Power).
Bandwagon: Old software products repositioned as
"peer-to-peer" (Applied MetaComputing, CenterSpan, Enfish,
Mangosoft, Vtel, Globescape, Quic).
Vapor: (Flycode, Groove Network, Roku, Centrata, Static, Dotcast).
Finally, everything you know is wrong. Again. Just when everyone
was ready to plunk down $500 for a simple Internet appliance to
cruise the Web, we suddenly need a PC with a 100-gigabyte hard
drive, a CD burner and speakers that can explode mice at 20 paces to
keep up with all the music, and soon video and full-length movies,
we can download via peer-to-peer. This makes Intel, Dell,
Hewlett-Packard and Compaq very, very happy. And of course, most of
the file formats for this great peer-to-peer content run best on
Windows...
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