Earthlink Releases P2P Content Sharing App

(via BoingBoing) Earthlink, the ISP, has posted a P2P content sharing app on its research site, as a test. The P2P app is SIP-based, an attempt to demonstrate the viability of SIP as a protocol over which such P2P applications–other than the well-known voice and video cases–may be implemented.

The other interesting part is the “manifesto” is has posted along with this app: “We chose file sharing to illustrate how SIP can be used to build an alternate P2P application, but file sharing itself is not the point — file sharing, of course, has been done. EarthLink SIPshare demonstrates that it is conceivable that voice over IP, where voice is just content of a different form, itself can be implemented using SIP in a fully standards-based P2P network. In other words, the effect of Skype, but with one important difference: using standards-based protocols, as EarthLink SIPshare does for content sharing.”

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