Peer-to-Peer Computing: Technologies for Sharing and Collaborating on the Net

By David Barkai

This insider's account of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Computing takes you from past experimental projects to the present resurgence, and looks into its future as a computing model for businesses and consumers... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0970284675
• ISBN13: 9780970284679
• Release Date: March 2002
• Publisher: Intel Pr
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.0" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

explains common properties of p2p networks

Barkai explains p2p computing to a reader unfamiliar with what this means, though you might well have heard breathless things claimed of it in the general media. P2P networks have gained notoriety for enabling the massive infringement of copyrighted works. Mostly music, but increasingly also video. Yet, as Barkai is careful to explain, p2p encompasses far more than just those usages and their associated networks (like Napster). P2P can be a useful form of distributed computing. And in this broad sense, P2P networks have been experimented with for quite a few years. The entire topic of grid computing, which has been pushed heavily by IBM et al, can be interpreted as a type of p2p network. Here, the possible usages are intensive scientific and engineering number crunching. The book covers basic issues faced by any p2p network that runs on the Internet. Like how to restrict membership. And how, given a node in this net, does it find another? These problems will arise in any instantiation. He gives good general advice that you might heed, if you are tempted to roll your own p2p network. Barkai also addresses another common idea in many p2p networks. To attack a hard problem by distributing the computational effort in the leaves of the network, instead of in big central nodes. An interesting side note is why this book is published by Intel. Perhaps because Intel is casting around, trying to stimulate a new, heavy usage of CPUs in millions of users' machines.