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Has P2P Become a Passing Fad?

Posted by Cliff on from the legislation's-true-effect-on-innovation dept.

plasticmillion asks: "As the RIAA launches increasingly rabid attacks against P2P networks and users, pundits continue to debate the future of P2P. On the one hand, some argue that P2P is just a clever way to escape detection from copyright owners, like in this recent Slashdot story. Others, like Clay Shirky, make a strong case that processing is destined to move to the 'edges' of the network. I'm curious to know what Slashdot readers think: is P2P the start of a major new trend that is just getting started, or is it a passing fad that will fade once legal client/server systems for media distribution finally take hold? If the former, which of the supposed advantages of P2P over client/server systems are really significant?"

3 of 393 comments (clear)

  1. File Sharing != P2P by asv108 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I am so sick of people using the term P2P as a replacement for file sharing. Yes, file sharing is one use of P2P, but there are plenty of other examples:
    • Distributed/Grid Computing
    • IM
    • Web Services
    • groupware
  2. Still early by ryanr · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think p2p is here to stay, and there are still features that need to be put in place univerally before it's mature, and all the various p2p flavors are comparable.

    The various bits are there scattered across different p2p networks. IMNSHO, all p2p networks/clients ought to have:

    -Swarming (as defined/used in BitTorrent)
    -Privacy/anonymity (perhaps as much as in Freenet)
    -Good searching (Kazaa, Napster, those types. With room for improvement all around)
    -Open-source clients with no ads/spyware
    -Decentralized/self-organizing networks (no central point of failure, or at least minimal)
    -Browser/web server hooks to autoswarm web content (there ought to be bittorrent:// links)

    Pardon my BitTorrent bias. I moderate the bittorrent_help mailing list, so I have more exposure to that.

    All these features should someday be pushed into numerous language libraries, so that they become ubiquitous.

  3. Bittorrent by Toasty16 · · Score: 5, Informative
    Bittorrent is currently the most viable legal method for large scale P2P. Just look at the network traffic that a site can sustain using Bittorrent's "swarm" download method. With it, a relatively small site can host a half-gigabyte file and transfer 1.31 terabytes of data!

    On the other hand we see how the traditional client/server system can break down if it has a significant user base and not enough bandwidth. The new Steam client hasn't allowed me to connect to a game since I installed it six hours ago. Who knows how much more data could have been transferred if all the Steam users were connected to each other and sharing their cache through a P2P network?

    The next step in P2P would be to combine the swarm downloading of Bittorrent with a persistent P2P network like Edonkey2000. The Achilles Heel of Bittorrent is that it can only transfer one file at a time, and the only way to download multiple files is to open multiple instances of Bittorrent, which drains upload speed, a precious commodity among home broadband users. Some work is being done towards this goal but it currently deals with upload rates for individual downloads, and doesn't manage multiple downloads.

    P2P is definitely the future, and I predict its popularity will continue to rise as more consumers sign up for broadband and start sucking down large media files like full albums and movies from corporate sites who aren't prepared for the broadband explosion.