P2P, now for Pretty Much Everything
At the dawn of the broadband era, peer-to-peer technology became closely associated with music file sharing, thanks to programs like Napster and Kazaa. Later, the emergence of protocols such as BitTorrent linked P2P to movie and television downloads. P2P became a red flag for MPAA, RIAA and other content-rights owner groups worldwide.
Over the years, P2P has found many legitimate uses and has found a way into everyday life. Why… even Akamai, which had scoffed at P2P, decided to acquire Red Swoosh.
“P2P has a bad reputation, but what we are showing is that it is not a file sharing technology, instead it is a legitimate technology,” Mikkel Dissing, CEO of RawFlow said in a conversation we had a little while ago.
RawFlow is a 6-year-old company that has developed a peer-to-peer streaming software platform for sharing live video streams. It is currently developing a personal broadcasting technology called Selfcast, also based on P2P technologies.
Nevertheless, the Akamai-Red Swoosh deal, announced last week, prompted me to think about how pervasive P2P really has become in our lives.
* P2P telephony: Skypeand its $4.2 billion price tag – that says it all.
* P2P TV: Joost and Babelgum are just a start. More like Zattoo are joining the party.
* Personal P2P: P2P sharing of photos, videos and other files with family and friends is becoming increasingly common place. The list of start-ups chasing this nascent market is growing by the month. Tubes is the latest to join the party.
* P2P Video Delivery is growing in popularity, especially in places where 10 megabit/s broadband connections are commonplace.
* P2P data syncing between computers.
* Distributed computing is another area where we have seen P2P technology shine. SETI@Home is a good example.
Are there any other examples that are missing from this list? Let us know.
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One of the more useful applications of P2P is software patch dissemination, especially in the online game arena where a patch can range up to 250 megs.
Hi Om, I have been following your comments on P2P for quite some time now – and am glad to see the number of serious companies leveraging the benefits of this architecture to solve real problems.
I would like to add Meeting Coordination/Calendar Sharing to your above list. Check out Tungle (www.tungle.com). We found that using a P2P architecture reduces our overall infrastructure cost, but more importantly assures privacy of information for our users.
P2P is a powerful and usefull tool whose activity will have a dramatic impact on both Wired and Wireless Broadband Metro networks.
Of special concern to us in this Metro Area Wireless Mesh market is the impact this type activity will have on the first generation (single and dual radio) Mesh Networks deployed today and unfortunately still being planned in many Muni markets.
Recent reports on faltering Mesh Networks will become common as P2P acitivity continues to grow in these Portable/Mobile markets.
A properly designed Wireless Mesh Networks with the right equipment can handle the P2P activity today and near term.
Jacomo
I thought eBay bought Skype for 2.4 billion?
I’d like to see some better video conferencing solutions. Mac to Mac is great with iChat but unfortunately, most people don’t have Macs. Skype is good but there has to be something out there that is better.
SIP P2P company called Damaka (www.damaka.com)
Has anyone heard of this 5 year of SIP P2P company called Damaka. I have heard that they are similar to Skype and they offer P2P Encrypted Application Sharing, Desktop Sharing, Whiteboarding, Video Mail, Voice Mail, Voice Call, Voice and Video Conference and PC to Phone, Dial-In, and Dial Out services and all this is done end to end encrytped.
I heard they are getting into Pocket PC too.
Has anyone heard of these guys and if so, what is your opinion on the company??
Unyte just launched a beta version of their desktop sharing tool that works in P2P mode:
http://www.unyte.net/download/beta.php
i am in this industry for a long time, I think TVKoo is much better than Zattoo or alike, since Chinese copyright environment help P2P live TV increasing and developed so easily. The TVKoo technology seems to be amazing, one server of 100M bandwidth could support global users of more than 300 000 users simultaneously. The super low cost leaded by P2P technology might show us the personal TV worldwide in the recent future.
So the point here of P2P is not what most people think of as traditional P2P. Napster, Gnutella, etc – even Bittorrent to some extent uses something called unstructured P2P. Its essentially not standard and has significant scaling flaws, and fault tolerance. The way to go is really using something called DHT – distributed Hash tables (the secret sauce behind new P2P). Bittorrent does not use it and will hence die unless it modifies its protocol. DHTs, are scalable, fault tolerant, and secure. (read up -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_hash_table)
DHT based companies will thrive. Example of its impact is evident through the fact that microsoft has used (created) something called Pastry. Its Splitstream product is very interesting. I am also sure its making a new one.
In any case, P2P (DHT based) is about scaling in a world where the last mile is a small straw and we’re trying to get a watermellon through. Until this straw becomes a big pipe, P2P is needed for distributing content (any content) but…it has to be done right. DHTs…the way to go.
Anyone know of companies using DHTs? (Chord, Pastry, Bamboo, Tapestry, etc)?
Acceptance of P2P as a standard part of the OS, media player, or browser has been a long time coming. Opera already has bit-torrent, but when do we think Microsoft will put P2P downloads into WMP. It can’t be long coming. I would have thought MS, Real Networks, and even WinAMP (AOL?) will likely need to put P2P into their players pretty soon. And what about leggit downloads from Napster, which does not appear to use p2p anymore.
On the downside, until we start getting better upstream bandwidth from ISPs in the UK I can’t see how I could keep running P2P on any of my machines all the time. What is more, P2P is NOT a green technology – it requires me to keep my PC on all the time. Good for other people’s download speeds, not so good for the planet.