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Putting P2P To Work
An anonymous reader writes "Looks like some folks at IBM have had moderate success in getting P2P adopted within the corporate enterprise. One new paper on the site describes experiences in deploying a decentralized search network spanning machines in 43 countries. Another describes a system for peer-to-peer sharing of dynamic web applications instead of static files. The idea is to support development and distribution of simple modules that themselves form meta p2p networks. Neat."
www.jxta.org does this now, p2p search, and much more.
uServ + Java p2p DDNS server = Dynamic Javanet = Good times for pppoe dsl users with dynamic ip's.
Adndromeda came to naught because the executive sponsor, Bob Miner, got sick and died. Key people moved on to work on the RAC database. (Not to say that Andromeda was easy).
One great feature of 10.2.x has become apparent through use of Rendezvous (aka OpenConf) and iChat. Rather than connecting to a central iChat (ie AOL) server, you can easily and automagically create an ad-hoc iChat network between any capable (running 10.2 and have a network connection) machines. This enables people to easily chat, exchange files etc. wherever they may be, by setting up simple wired or wireless networks. Look out for more of this at various conferences (wireless ad-hoc networks) and in the workplace.
This sort of technology is being pushed by Apple and will be included in future updates to various "iApps" including iTunes...
umm... yeah spyware isn't on the network.
it's on the frontend that you download.
And doing that is stupid.
There's Gnucleus
Open source and delicious.
And WinMx
No spyware. No bullshit.
the list continues...don't be dumb read the fine print
ThunderBird. Nuff said.
YouServ is a bit different than traditional P2P apps most people are familiar with. For one, there is accountability: Every one of the files you share has YOUR NAME embedded within the URL required for accessing that file, even if that file resides on another machine at the time of download (e.g. from the ability to replicate your site to other machines). Unless you don't value your job, you'd be highly unlikely to use this system for sharing porn / MP3's / etc, a point made in the paper on the search function.
Two, it's not just for sharing files that are world readable. It's also for sharing stuff with only designated users and groups. Every node is tied together by a single sign-on infrastructure so you can use one and only one password to access secured content on any node, without the possibility of malicious nodes sniffing and stashing your password.
Third, it's at its core web compatible. You access the network with a regular web browser. There s no need to install spyware riddled clients to get at anything. Each node provides a web accessible search interface for searching the globally shared content or site-specific content. You only install the software if you want to host stuff.
A worse one (for YouServ compatability and anything else reyling on dynamic DNS) is the fact that Mozilla caches IP addresses until the browser is completely restarted. How's that for stupid?
Please vote to have this issue fixed right here.
The system is intended for personal web hosting, that is, for use by mostly non-technical users for sharing files, creating web logs, guest books, and so on, using their own hardware (and that of their friends). In no way are we trying to provide p2p solutions to business class functions such as serving an online store (though I agree it would be cool if someone did that).
Indeed the existing plugins are simple (my development time has been limited and this component is very new), and at this point are intended only to demonstrate the API features. But even quite simple plugins, if they cooperate across multiple machines, can do some very cool things, a few examples of which are proposed in the paper: sharing files on multiple other p2p networks, distributed content caching ("akamai for free"), cooperative weblogging, and so on. Again, you woudln't use this to build a high-traffic online store, but it does give you many new and easy to use ways to enhance and publish your own (web) content.
I've used MyNapster (free, GPL, Win32, no spyware) for a long time now, the latest version is comparable to LimeWire, without the java-ickyness. MyNapster has a down-to-business interface and some cool tools to visualize the parts of the Gnutella network you can see. Give it a whirl if you can. On Linux I run GTK-Gnutella, because it has geeky features and I dig the interface.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
Look at the PIER project at the Database group in UC Berkeley.
.. it stands for "P2P Information Exchange and Retrieval"
PIER is a P2P Query Processor
http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~huebsch/pier/
A P2P network based on PKI could perform authentication without requiring 24/7 access to a central server.
Once the file has been signed by a certificate authority and the CA's public key is loaded in the P2P software, the validity of the file can be confirmed. Of course, certificate revocation lists are more problematic, but they too could be distributed via P2P.
If the network is used to insert files on a continueos basis, subordinate CA's could handle the load a redundancy.
Take a look at the content query system (CQS)on IBM's developerworks...
Yes, this means it does exhibit a single point of failure, but as the system is not intended for piracy, porn, evading censorship, or other uses that tend to get systems "shut down", the benefits of centrally coordinating the system outweigh the functionality and performance limitations of a fully decentralized approach.
The difference from this and a completely server-based solution is that there are no central requirements that involve a large amount of resources. The central servers are a pair of old 400MHZ PII boxes, one for DNS, and one for the coordinating services. A one man operation can easily run this system on cheap hardware and a pipe with only moderate bandwidth, and still serve tens if not hundreds of thousands of users.
It will let you encode any YouServ URL so that it gets cached and served by an army of available machines instead of just your own machine.