Posted on Charity Village August 2002

Peer to peer computing is a major new trend in information technology that is likely to have a significant effect on the way that work groups share information. Peer-to-peer (or P2P) describes software applications that share resources among computers that are linked by the Internet while having at least some autonomy from central servers (taken from a definition in OpenP2P.com). Napster, Kazaa, Gnutella, Morpheus and a number of other file-sharing programs are examples of P2P applications – users share files with each other directly between their computers.

Until now, P2P has focused on music and video files, and has an underground reputation because of its association with copyright infringements. However, the technology itself has wonderful applications for collaboration. According to many analysts, centralized servers are still the best way to handle information within large organizations, but “If you're trying to tie together members of a group where no one is in charge or everyone is a volunteer, then P2P is the way to go.” [from ZDNet]. Sounds like a description of many nonprofits.

In this article, I'll describe a few examples of P2P applications that show its potential. Some of them are not quite ready for use in an enterprise. Microsoft is getting seriously interested in this approach, so we may see some quick development in the next year or two. For example, Microsoft's SharePoint Team Services is being integrated with Groove in the next few months.

Groove – covered in one of my previous articles for Charity Village – is a set of tools that allows members of a distributed workgroup to collaborate securely across organizations. For example, members of a workgroup could be sharing sensitive information that could not be protected within any one firewall, and setting up separate VPNs for each workgroup is expensive and unwieldy. Groove permits groups of any size to share files, discussions, instant messaging, project tasks and so on with a high degree of security. In addition, members can work offline (without being connected to the Internet) as long as they are occasionally connected for updates of data. Microsoft has announced that it plans to enable Groove to exchange information through SharePoint Team Services. The major drawbacks of Groove right now are that it takes a huge amount of memory and system resources (if you don't have a fast computer with lots of RAM, forget it) and it doesn't work with Macs or Linux machines. Groove plans to issue an update in the next few months, and rumour says that performance should improve. Keep an eye on this product; it's inexpensive, extremely powerful, and has a lot of promise.

YouServ is experimental software by IBM that allows you to share the content of any directory on your own computer with anyone on the Web. It's very easy to set up and use, and requires no information technology staff. You can define private files and restrict access to certain users, such as your workgroup. The program has not been released publicly by IBM, though it's being used on a pilot basis by Carnegie Mellon University. It looks like a great way to share information easily, and may become publicly available in the next few months.

Peerstor is another promising P2P application that focuses on automatic file backups. Peerstor does realtime updates of data on a LAN to ensure that no data gets lost. It may be significantly easier and cheaper than other forms of backup, such as tape, and allows a LAN to automatically transfer to a secondary data store if the primary store is damaged. This means that organizations can use cheaper file servers because fail-safes are provided by software instead of hardware. When I spoke to Joe Pennino, Peerstor's CEO, he said that he expects the software to cost $150/workstation US, and to be available next month.

Rebol (pronounced like rebel – one of their affiliated websites is called rebolforces.com) was created by Carl Sassenrath, one of the developers of the Amiga operating system. It's a scripting language that allows programmers to write complex instructions with very simple little programs called reblets. Rebol was nominated for a Webby Award for technical achievement this year. The Rebol developer community tends to be deeply technical, so it's hard to understand what Rebol can actually do, which is typical of the P2P scene right now. Rebol works on about 40 different operating systems, takes up almost no system resources, can be used by old and slow computers, and enables many of the same applications provided by Groove, though in a more primitive form. It's hard to get and use so far because of the geek factor, but we're experimenting with it and it looks promising.

Xolox is a free file-sharing program based on the Gnutella network. With this type of software, you can freely share documents and files to anyone on Gnutella. This might be helpful for certain types of political action, but it does restrict your reach to fellow Gnutella denizens. Xolox is getting good reviews though, and might be a helpful introduction to the multimedia P2P world.

WARNING: All files that you share should be screened with anti-virus software. This goes both ways; you don't want to infect other peoples' computers and you certainly don't want to infect yours.

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Gillian Kerr, Ph.D., C.Psych.

President, RealWorld Systems

gkerr at realworldsystems.net