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Internet2 Plus P2P Equals...
Bill, I'm lost in cyberspace... writes "News.com has an article up about a Direct Connected P2P network set up at universities which are on Internet2. This is majorly cool! More direct information is available at i2hub.com for those lucky enough to be located at a University with Internet2 access."
You know why "Internet2" is faster than the "commodity Internet" on college campuses? People weren't typically using "Internet2" for downloading movies and music. Just because the "Internet2" connections are less expensive, because they are funded through research grants, does not mean that students should be blowing large amounts of pointless traffic through it. The funding can get shut off just as "easily" as it came in.
Officials at the central Internet2 project said they had no theoretical objection to the students' action, at least from the strictly technological side. The network was developed to spur innovation wherever it arises, much as users of the original academic networks developed e-mail and chat features, a representative for the project said.
Yes, I think that P2P programs can be considered research and should even be developed on fast networks like this. I just don't think that students should take advantage of the *currently* open nature of the network just because they can.
Don't ruin it for everyone else like *we* did back in the late 1990s just because you want free music. Instead of fighting with the RIAA by downloading their music shut them off by not listening to it at all. Please support bands that allow the free taping and distribution of their music (see link in my signature below).
Clearly the development of this application falls under the purview and purpose of Internet2 - whereas the use of it probably does not.
No matter how you want to dress it up with rhetoric, the wide-spread broadcast of other peoples' material without permission is -- under current statute -- unlawful, and leaves one liable to civil and possible criminal prosecution.
What never ceases to amaze me is how many students think they can poke at the bears with impunity, and then come crying when they get a claw across the face.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Or just a proof that given time, bandwidth usage will fill to whatever pipe it's given no matter how fat a pipe you supply. Afterall, as our hard drives got bigger, so did the programs we were given to store on them...
It was the over commercialization of the Internet that has 'ruined' things for us.
Not that some people are sharing music and video.
But then again, sounded like you have an agenda to push.. so nevermind.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I, but probably others, realised not long ago that it's rapidly approaching the point at which the characteristics of "Internet V2 (post WWW)" can be ascertained, and certainly apart from high speed, one of them as the death of unidirectional WWW.
The problem with HTTP is (as you see with the slashdot effect) that there is no inherent mass-distribution/replication in it. What will be the next big technology will be some sort of fluid merge between HTTP, P2P (BT, etc), FTP, to bring a real massively distributed content layer. Built into this protocol would be multicast as well (in a way, P2P is inherently multicast).
This means that when you browse the web, your browsers transport layer is really acting as real-time P2P, and your network ISP would install seamless "content caching" (e.g. akamani style) as part of the network. Effectively, there needs to be a replacement of HTTP/TCP as a new "DTP" (distributed transport protocol).