Peer to Peer: Collaboration and Sharing over the Internet

Power to the People

The “new” p2p technology is for many as much a “political” statement as a technological one. Perhaps this explains some of the buzz—it’s a revolution of sorts.

Bit 1.16 P2P is about distributed ownership of resources. Characteristic for current p2p networks is that the computing resources (PCs) are owned and managed by the users.

The issue has several aspects. At its most trivial level, any one entity bears few centralized investments and administrative costs. Even server-mediated solutions can be deployed with modest means, as numerous startups have shown. As nodes connect to the network, offering their resources, a computing entity on a larger scale emerges. This building of distributed supercomputers on a shoestring has ...