Peer-to-Peer : Harnessing the power of disruptive technologies

Peer-to-Peer : Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies

Andrew Oram , 2001

What the book is about

The term "peer-to-peer " has come to be applied to networks that expect end users to contribute their own s , computing time , or other resources to some shared project . Even more interesting than the systems ' technical underpinnings are their socially disruptive potential : in various ways they return content , choice , and control to ordinary users . While this book is mostly about the technical promise of peer-to-peer , we also talk about its exciting social promise Communities have been

forming on the Internet for a long time , but they have been limited by the flat interactive qualities of email and Network newsgroups . People can exchange recommendations and ideas over these media , but have great difficulty commenting on each other 's postings structuring information , performing searches , or creating summaries . If tools provided ways to organize information intelligently , and if each person could serve up his or her own data and retrieve others ' data , the possibilities for collaboration would take off . Peer-to-peer technologies along with metadata could enhance almost any group of people who share an interest--technical , cultural , political , medical you name it . This book presents the goals that drive the developers of the best-known peer-to-peer systems , the problems they 've faced , and the technical solutions they 've found . Learn here the essentials of peer-to-peer from leaders of the field

Nelson Minar and Marc Hedlund of HYPERLINK "http /www .popularpower .com " Popular Power on a history of peer-to-peer

Clay Shirky of acceleratorgroup on where peer-to-peer is likely to be headed

Tim O 'Reilly of O 'Reilly and Associates on redefining the public 's perceptions

Dan Bricklin , cocreator of Visicalc on harvesting information from end-users

David Anderson of SETI home on how SETI Home created the world 's largest computer

Jeremie Miller of Jabber on the Internet as a collection of conversations

Gene Kan of Gnutella and GoneSilent .com on lessons from Gnutella for peer-to-peer technologies

Adam Langley of Freenet on Freenet 's present and upcoming architecture

Alan Brown of Red Rover , on a deliberately low-tech content distribution system

Marc Waldman , Lorrie Cranor , and Avi Rubin of AT T Labs on the Publius project and trust in distributed systems

Roger Dingledine , Michael J . Freedman , and David Molnar of Free Haven on resource allocation and accountability in distributed systems

Rael Dornfest of O 'Reilley Network and Dan Brickley of ILRT /RDF Web , on metadata

Theodore Hong of Freenet on performance

Richard Lethin of Reputation Technologies on how reputation can be built online

Jon Udell of BYTE and Nimisha Asthagiri and Walter Tuvell of Groove Networks on security

Brandon Wiley of Freenet on gateways between peer-to-peer systems

What do I think about the book

Peer-to-Peer is a book about an emerging idea . That idea is that the traditional model of participating in the Internet , in which a small computer operated by an everyday user (a "client ) asks for and receives information from a big computer administered by a corporation or other large entity (a...