Barry asked me to lead a panel discussion on Peer-to-Peer file sharing at this week's UEN Technical Summit. This is a subject, from a management perspective, that has occupied a great deal of my time and thinking energy. I suppose that my professional interest hit its high point last year in some Steering Committee discussions.

George Brown, UEN Policy guy, made the statement on multiple occasions that there were no legitimate uses for peer-to-peer. As much as I respect George and enjoy his insights, that statement always grates on me.

So last year, after hearing that statement several times, I did some research. It turns out that there is a peer-to-peer working group that has identified four peer-to-peer computing scenarios. These scenarios, taken right from the P2P Working Group web site, are as follows:

1. Collaboration. Peer-to-peer computing empowers individuals and teams to create and administer real-time and off-line collaboration areas in a variety of ways, whether administered, unadministered, across the Internet, or behind the firewall. Peer-to-peer collaboration tools also mean that teams have access to the freshest data.

Collaboration increases productivity by decreasing the time for multiple reviews by project participants and allows teams in different geographic areas to work together. As with file sharing, it can decrease network traffic by eliminating e-mail and decreases server storage needs by storing the project locally.

2. Edge services. It's exactly what you think: Akamai for the enterprise. Peer-to-peer computing can help businesses deliver services and capabilities more efficiently across diverse geographic boundaries. In essence, edge services move data closer to the point at which it is actually consumed acting as a network caching mechanism. For example, a company with sites in multiple continents needs to provide the same standard training across multiple continents using the Web. Instead of streaming the database for the training session on one central server located at the main site, the company can store the video on local clients, which act essentially as local database servers. This speeds up the session because the streaming happens over the local LAN instead of the WAN. It also utilizes existing storage space, thereby saving money by eliminating the need for local storage on servers.

3. Distributed computing and resources. Peer-to-peer computing can help businesses with large-scale computer processing needs. Using a network of computers, peer-to-peer technology can use idle CPU MIPS and disk space, allowing businesses to distribute large computational jobs across multiple computers. In addition, results can be shared directly between participating peers.

The combined power of previously untapped computational resources can easily surpass the normal available power of an enterprise system without distributed computing. The results are faster completion times and lower cost because the technology takes advantage of power available on client systems.

4. Intelligent agents. Peer to peer computing also allows computing networks to dynamically work together using intelligent agents. Agents reside on peer computers and communicate various kinds of information back and forth. Agents may also initiate tasks on behalf of other peer systems. For instance, Intelligent agents can be used to prioritize tasks on a network, change traffic flow, search for files locally or determine anomalous behavior and stop it before it effects the network, such as a virus.

So the next time anyone tells you that there are no legitimate uses for peer-to-peer computing, you can tell them just where to go.

To be sure there a problems with peer-to-peer computing. I've categorized them into the following:

1. Illegal activities. I think of this area strictly in the "take over machines and use them to bad things" way.

2. Copyright violations. Yes, this too is illegal. But I think of this area more as a marketing and PR problem for the MPAA and RIAA. Let's face it, the sharing of music and movie files is here to stay. The copyright holders just need to capitalize on and support peer-to-peer file sharing. Until that day we will continue to be not amused by this problem.

3. Security. Letting the world into your servers to download files cannot be a good idea.

4. Latent Mischief. This probably isn't much different than illegal activities or security. But it still remains a serious issue that should be considered separately. From what I've read there are certain unscrupulous types who lurk around big pipe network and piggyback onto unsuspecting legitimate P2P users. These creeps slip into networks and infect machines, Then they wait for a moment to make use of these captured resources. Not good.

I don't even pretend to have any answers here. Just observations and questions..........
10:10:52 PM    comment []