JXTA in a Nutshell

The JXTA Three-Layer Cake

JXTA defines three layers:

Platform, or core

This layer encapsulates minimal and essential primitives that are common to P2P networking, including peers, peergroups, discovery, communication, monitoring, and associated security primitives. This layer is ideally shared by all P2P devices so that interoperability becomes possible.

Services

This layer includes network services that may not be absolutely necessary for a P2P network to operate but are common or desirable to be available for the P2P environment. Examples of network services include search and indexing, directories, storage systems, file sharing, distributed file systems, resource aggregation and renting, protocol translation, authentication, and PKI services.

Applications

This layer includes P2P instant messaging, entertainment content management and delivery, P2P email systems, distributed auction systems, and many other systems. Obviously, the boundary between services and applications is not rigid. An application for one customer can be viewed as a service by another customer.