P2P Could Make Internet More Reliable: Gettin' JNGI With It.

P2P is how the internet was supposed to constructed. Instead we got an client - server architecture. So says this incredibly interesting and challenge-issuing report from the MIT Enterprise Technology Review. The most recent example of how this top current top-down architecture can cripple the internet is the VeriSign SiteFinder debacle. One top level screw up and the whole thing breaks. Well, not the whole thing, but you get the picture.

I'm personal enamored with P2P and shudder when people instantly equate P2P with music file sharing. Ultimately P2P is and can be so much more than trading Britney Spears' cruddy songs.

At JavaOne, as I've written before, one of the most interesting presentations I attended was by the JNGI project. From JNGI's project page, "JNGI is a framework that users can use to submit jobs. These jobs are split and distributed among several peers. The use of JXTA peer groups helps us to localize communication, which in turn improves scaling.  Also, by providing redundancy within peer groups, we ensure that failures do not affect job completion." The emphasis is mine. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea is that peers can detect when other peers are taken down (attack or otherwise) and pick up the slack by redistributing the work so the network and it's current operations are not interrupted.

If anything the internet is in danger of being attacked out of existence. Legal, Worms, Viruses, you name it, it is denying service to internet users on a 24X7 basis. The time has never been better to visit JNGI and get to work on a truly P2P based net.