Care to peer into the future? :)
[link|http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/08/03/p2p.potential.idg/index.html|
Peer-to-peer potential rediscovered]

August 3, 2001 Posted: 8:05 a.m. EDT (1205 GMT)

By Susan Breidenbach

(IDG) -- Peer-to-peer has been generating lots of attention. Like PCs in the 1980s and the Web in the 1990s, industry watchers say it is one of those disruptive technologies that will turn much of computing upside-down.

This doesn't resonate well with IT professionals who have unpleasant memories of certain early LAN technologies. They call peer-to-peer unsecure, unscalable and unmanageable.

But peer-to-peer technologies are slipping in the back door, and they are a lot less visible than PCs were. Cost isn't as much of a barrier, either. With industry giants such as Intel and Sun backing major peer-to-peer initiatives, it's time to reevaluate peer-to-peer.

"If you are supporting a group of employees who are collaborating with partners on a project, and they go from four people talking once a week and sharing five files to 12 people talking three times a day and sharing 500 files scattered across four companies, [peer-to-peer] technologies can make your job -- and theirs -- a lot easier," advises Andy Oram, editor of the book Peer-to-Peer.

This isn't Windows for workgroups
Of course, peer-to-peer isn't a new concept. IP routing is peer-to-peer, as is the rest of the Internet's original foundation. But the sudden commercialization of the Internet in the mid-1990s imposed a client/server superstructure.