Counter Culture OriginsIn its early stages the Internet was largely operated for and by individuals. For those of you that have come online in more recent years imagine a strong community spirit; a whiff of revolution promising a better, more empowered world aided by technology. Web sites then were often quite primitive. They were created by technically minded folk with a message or resource that they wished to share with their peers. As the Net saw widespread adaptation in the 1990s it became increasingly commercial, a fact that has often been lamented by long-term Net technophiles.
Suddenly there were banner advertisements everywhere; e-commerce was the buzzword appearing on a thousand financial pages and the original 'phreak communities' retreated into their enclaves vowing to fight back. The Open Source Movement and Mozilla (Netscape Open Source) Project are well known examples of such counter establishment groupings. Others in the slash dot brigade gathered in obscure Usenet Newsgroups, the Net's underbelly, to share code, ideology and hatch new plans to resurrect the medium for the individual and 'return power to the people'. Somewhere in these ranks the idea of peer-to-peer technologies (P2P) evolved. In light of this it is ironic that most of the IT behemoth companies are now backing the technology. David Barkai, a senior IMB executive recently proclaimed that the impact of P2P would be comparable to the introduction of the graphical interface browser. Bertelsmann bought into P2P music sharing community Napster and Microsoft is extending its MSN Messenger/Netmeeting products in the upcoming Windows XP to include sophisticated P2P features. Time we had a closer look to see what all the fuss is about.
P2P was first associated with Napster, the 'notorious' music file sharing service that dominated the headlines in 2000. This concept was thought up by college student Shawn Fanning who taught himself the C programming language to write a simple two-part program that would enable people to exchange music on the Net. Its first part consisted of a server program to which users could connect to in order to chat to each other in real time and to list digital music files that they wished to share so that others could access them for their own use. The second part of the program was the peer-to-peer client. The user would download and install this program. It contained an inbuilt MP3 digital music player, a chat utility, search functions as well an interface that allowed users to securely share the contents of part of their hard drive. Fanning, who had written the program in the back room of his uncle's pub, had no idea how hugely successful his idea would be, that it would rock at the very foundations of the music industry. Within the span of 12 months Napster had close to 50 million users! Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your politics) the system had a vulnerability. It was designed as a server technology consisting of computers with a physical location. All that was needed to halt the service was to pull the plug out of the wall.
Napster's Offspring Roam Free The movement was not to be halted. Just when the recording industry thought it had tamed the monster by hobbling Napster, another juggernaut emerged from the underground. A group of bright programmers rolled out the Gnutella protocol. This was pure P2P computing. It connected users' computers directly to each other. The originators sardonically stated on their Web site that their product had been designed to 'withstand a nuclear war'. Gnutella had, and still has, no commercial affiliation and was therefore almost impossible to pin down in the legal sense. The various client programs utilising the Gnutella protocol such as Bearshare and Limewire were not confined to digital music. The protocol transfers virtually any type of data, from text files to mpeg movies to complete software programs! Since all data in P2P computing is shared live by users on thousands of Internet connected computers there is little chance of broken links and non-existent content, a problem which plagues traditional Web search engines and directories.
Anarchist Playground and Egalitarian MarketplaceThe end of intellectual property and copyright? A safe haven for anarchists and software pirates? Yes, but potentially also a tremendously effective way of doing business or even delivering training in a decentralised marketplace. In a more mature form P2P has the potential to connect shoppers directly millions of sellers, consultants and trainers. This is likely to result in fierce competition, eroding the dominance of established players in the economy. For example, an Australian school leaver wishing to attain a science qualification might fire up her P2P client and execute a search to list all professors in her countries of choice that offer private tuition for her chosen course. Up comes a list of 298 results, listing tuition fees, credentials and so on. She choses to a certain A. Smith, ex Havard who is offering an outstanding combination of value-for-money, personal tuition time and course completion statistics. With a click of a button, she enters the secure, peer-based architecture located on his computer. An interview commences using voice and video. They come to an agreement, a contract is signed electronically, fees are paid and the student is allocated a dedicated workspace on Smith's computer. All resources are located here in e-book format, digital audio and streaming video. They can be transferred directly from the tutor's machine to the student's. She uses her mobile Pocket PC for audio playback and reading and is thus not confined to her computer workstation. The professor is able to leverage his time through the use of pre-recorded audio and video lectures that students may transfer on demand. This allows him to concentrate on weekly one-on-one facilitation times. The proven model of Socratic dialogue resurrected. A very satisfying way to learn and teach, wouldn't you say?
Getting there?Did we hear you express doubts that the above scenario would be possible? We have already seen the explosive power generated by providing a means of connecting like-minded consumers directly to each other by way of the Napster and Gnutella examples. There are many more projects of this type under development, some of which we have listed in the resource section at the end of this article. If you have any doubts about peer-to-peer network capabilities to facilitate communication, try out one of the many P2P communication clients such as Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, MSN Messenger/Netmeeting all of which already provide direct audio communication, file sharing and so on. These are outstanding tools for your online classroom given that they already enjoy a massive user base worldwide.
The days of dial up modem connections are numbered with more and more Internet users making the transition to broadband technologies such as Cable and ADSL, which provide permanent Internet connections and the ability to receive and send rich multimedia data.
Above all, we note that the big players are getting in on the act, elbowing out the originators of P2P networks. Going on past patterns and trends this could well mean that the technology will thrive and become ubiquitous. One can't help but feel a little sympathy for those unsung cyber idealists once more outrun, can one?
RESOURCESWindows Experience (XP)www.microsoft.com/windowsxpMSN Messenger http://messenger.ninemsn.com.auMS Netmeeting www.microsoft.com/windows/netmeetingSlashdot www.slashdot.orgNapster www.napster.comGnutella Clients www.gnutelliums.comZeropaid www.zeropaid.comO'Reillys Open Peer to Peer Project www.openp2p.comPocket PC www.microsoft.com/mobile/pocketpcICQ www.icq.comYahoo Messenger http://messenger.yahoo.comSeti@Home Project (Distributed computing) http://setiathome.ssl.berkeley.eduScientific experiment located at Berkeley University that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyses radio telescope data.
