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P2P applications make money for companies who use them for instant messaging, workgroups, and distributed computing. They are more difficult to block at company firewalls than incoming e-mail viruses. They have shifted the focus of Internet computing away from central portals.
System administrators know they can't effectively block P2P networking. In an environment of constantly changing software, technical blocks are just temporary solutions. As the cross-talk on slashdot.org shows, Napster addicts have developed an alternative market of extremely smart software
already. The generation beyond Napster includes services that won't be stopped by technical means. MP3 files will always be shared across the Internet.
Prior to the dot.com shakeout, predictable patterns of usage appeared on the Internet. Retail vendors used the Web as a mail order channel. Entertainment firms used it to promote signed bands. Portals and search engines needed Internet space to flog banner ads. But the average user
revealed startling patterns. Average Internet users push and pull more megabytes of e-mail and files, more than they view web pages.
The P2P technologies are not new. However, millions of people hae realised for the first time that they could do more than passively browse the Internet.The new P2P technologies do not need clients and servers. Instead, the
significant communication takes place between cooperating peers. So, with millions of dollars showered on portals around the world, the model left standing is P2P.
In late summer 2000, P2P technology started evolving faster as key leaders started talking intensively to each other. This resulted in better functionality as well as building a positive public image for P2P. The main P2P architects include aggressively innovative technologists from major
companies, visionary heads of startups, journalists, and leaders of experimental academic projects. Most share a common philosophy they are incensed over the threat of software patents.
What happens to Internet traffic if P2P continues to gain more users? Although performance concerns many observers, the experts expect P2P to actually conserve bandwidth when used appropriately.
Effective P2P challenges the architecture of current Internet services. P2P redefines the assumptions behind next year's Irish roll-out of asymmetric service (like ADSL and cable modems). Michael Tiemann, CTO of Red Hat, goes
so far as to say, "Peer-to-peer may be the critical enabling technology that makes broadband possible." P2P allows for people interested in a topic to create their own language for talking about it. While different communities may all share an underlying infrastructure, like Jabber's chat service or Gnutella file sharing, the structure of the users' data can emerge directly from the users.
Metadata, which describes each file and the elements within it, sets up the process. Standards committees can flush out schemas that help make P2P work. Rael Dornfest, creator of the Meerkat service for the O'Reilly Network, repeatedly points out that a good metadata adds logarithmically to
the value and uses of the data it describes.
Invisible Worlds promotes a generalised approach to mapping data for users. It proposes the Simple Exchange Protocol, currently an Internet Draft. The white papers at invisible.net provide compelling reasons for services to
expose their data schemas and publish open Application Programming Interfaces to their services.
Once you adopt the P2P mindset, you invariably start deploring attempts to shut off innovation through bans on deep linking and you begin to resent restrictions on the amount of data one user can retrieve.
As P2P continues evolving, the community has to colloborate. Each peer can produce as well as consume information. As the Internet has shown, producers are relatively few. On Usernet News, the ratio of posters to
total readers is less than 7 percent. No more than 10 percent of Irish mailing list members ever contribute to electronic shoptalk. But that ratio keeps the system moving. Even low participation by diverse members creates vibrant, self-organising communities.
P2P facilitates the process of collaboration. It doesn't work well for handling rapidly changing data. It does reward large communities whose members know what they want before they start searching.
And it draws from an alternative strength: the strength of connecting people. If you're connected to a P2P network that includes knowledgeable members, you're part of the second generation of the Internet whose usage patterns have already circumvented the outdated portal model of the 90s.
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