The Meshverse Journal

I think Albert Ip provides some reasonable definitions of the terms peer-to-peer and mesh networking but as with a forest(especially a rainforest) precise definitions of trees, to degree they can be said to exist, tend to obscure the forestness of the tree. Explaining how the Internet evolved and why peer-to-peer and client-server aren’t mutually exclusive, Tim O’Reilly said:

Centralization and decentralization are never so clearly separable as anyone fixated on buzzwords might like.

Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies

Although I can understand how my original Gear Mesh post may have been interpreted to mean that Google Gears is or will become a p2p platform,  my intention was to point out the forest GG is a catalyst for. To that end I did say:

All modern PC’s can run webservers, but what Google Gears adds is a database and UI that will not only empower individual applications, but enable organizations of all sizes and even individuals to collaborate in grids … Now that the genie is out of the bottle people will look to deploy other database servers locally … Imagine Google Gears solutions running on these machines which will safely collaborate with other peers as well as the web

Croquet is p2p at it’s core but each instance of Croquet is perfectly capable of simultaneously behaving as a client and/or server. Similarly, Jini/Javaspaces are not inherently p2p but can be configured to function as a p2p service. Some see the extent of this overlap as one way to classify p2p networks. and from a computer science perspective:

Technically, a completely pure peer-to-peer application must implement only peering protocols that do not recognize the concepts of “server” and “client”. Such pure peer applications and networks are rare. Most networks and applications described as peer-to-peer actually contain or rely on some non-peer elements, such as DNS. Also, real world applications often use multiple protocols and act as client, server, and peer simultaneously, or over time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 10th, 2007 at 9:50 pm and is filed under Google, Grids, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.