| Monday, November 5 |
So many ideas and so many technologies are swirling around P2P --
decentralization, distributed computing, web services, JXTA, UDDI,
SOAP -- that its sometimes hard to see order in the chaos. If we look
past the labels and the individual applications, though, we can see
one thing clearly: The twin revolutions of the PC and the internet
collided in 1994, and for half a dozen years after, browser+server was
the indispensible internet architecture.
Today, we are witnessing a Great Re-wiring, a chance to reconsider how
the world's devices connect to the internet and to one another outside
the browser+server framework, and no matter what label we choose for
it, this re-wiring is transforming the network and how we use it.
Mark Lucovsky, a distinguished engineer at Microsoft and the architect of the .NET My Services, discusses several Microsoft initiatives for building distributed services. Lucovsky outlines the .NET My Services programming model and how it is used for both peer-to-peer and distributed applications, as well as some related developments in peer-to-peer infrastructure.
| Tuesday, November 6 |
Given that the web is all about massive connectedness, what are the driving principles behind the evolution of the web and what do they tell us about the harmonisation of web services, peer-to-peer computing and wireless connectivity? Simon Phipps explores the principles behind the evolution of the web, position initiatives such as UDDI, SunONE and JXTA in the evolutionary scale, and peers into the future of services on the internet.
What the web did for business-to-consumer interactions, web services are poised to do for business-to-business interactions. Built on top of new and emerging technologies such as HTTP, XML, SOAP, and UDDI, web services are the next horizon for e-business. The key to reaching this horizon is a common program-to-program communication model that changes the rules of integration both within and across new and existing enterprise systems.
This presentation will cover web services: what they are, why and how they are changing program-to-program communication, and how they are transforming businesses. It will explain the key web services standards, their adoption in the industry, and some of the key emerging directions. Finally it will give a brief summary of IBM's current and future product support for developing and deploying web services.
| Wednesday, November 7 |
Congressman Rick Boucher (D - VA), leading architect of federal policy for the Internet, discusses the impact of web services and peer services on the Internet legislative scene.
Enormous popularity and litigation uncertainty have been the hallmarks of P2P file-sharing so far. What does the future hold? How have the lawsuits affected file-sharing, P2P and innovation generally? Are content owners colluding to eliminate competitors in the media distribution channel of the future? Representatives from Limewire, Music City (Morpheus), and Aimster address these questions and more in a panel discussion moderated by Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Chudnov examines the past, present, and future for libraries as collection boundary-less community content providers. How does the case for libraries as backbone p2p file-sharing infrastructure stack up? In some niches, quite well. Chudnove explores the symbiotic opportunities that may exist for us now and are sure to appear in the future.
Libraries have been file-sharing for ages; not simply pooling resources
for a single geographic community but finding an item for any local user
from any of thousands of peer libraries within cooperative national or
international regions. This session takes a look at the history of inter-library loan, its origins and milestone achievements, legal, technological,
economic, social, or otherwise.
Consider whether instantaneous file sharing systems surpass the possible scale and utility of libraries and the areas of service which are wholly incomparable. Chudnov examines specific niches of content and services which are likely to always best be served by libraries, and why libraries might have a leg up on some for-profit p2p file-sharing infrastructure providers even if there seems to be no rational technical argument for this to be so.
A content network enables the description, discovery, and distribution
of discrete pieces of information between providers and consumers. The
web as a content network assumes static, always on content providers.
First generation peer to peer content networks address the issue of
occasionally connected and mobile content providers, but assume highly
redundant static content. Next generation content networks must address
the issue of unique and dynamic content on occasionally connected and
mobile content providers. Examples of these applications include: replicating schedule information between various Palm Pilots, syndicating the Great American Novel in serialized form as I write it on my pc-tablet, or using my digital camera to distribute a daily picture of the street outside my cigar store.
To build these types of applications requires a store and forward
messaging architecture to negotiate presence, and the ability to redirect
requests from logical addresses to physical addresses. Presence and
address negotiation will be implemented by tunneling Gnutella's host
catching messages over Jabber's Instant Messaging protocol the availability and current addresses of both client and server are resolved, and then dropping the remaining transfer back into a standard Gnutella conversation. In addition, we will look at bandwidth usage and security enhancements which become possible using this architecture.
This session will cover proposed changes to the Gnutella 0.4 protocol,
incorporating the LimeWire MetaData proposal
(http://www.limewire.com/developer/MetaProposal.htm); altering the clip2
reflector/proxy implementation (http://www.clip2.com/reflector_wp.html),
to cache content listings even when the resource is offline; and
modifying the implementation of the Gnutella servent, incorporating
Jabber client functionality. It will cover the modifications to the
Gnutella servent in some detail, including source code examples.
If caching servers at the ISPs form an edge network, then are
peer-to-peer networks ... beyond the edge? No matter how much bandwidth costs drop, no matter how much fiber gets laid,
people always want more bandwidth, and nothing uses more bandwidth than
audio and video media.
Technologies that should have helped A/V - the mbone, caching net appliances -
failed to solve the problem at large on the internet. While more and more bandwidth is the perennial brute force solution to
streaming media, peer to peer networking is the first elegant solution to
arrive in a while.
This session presents an analysis of the many content-delivery solutions being
developed with peer-to-peer technologies to create cost effective, scalable
media delivery on the Internet.
Often overlooked in the P2P space, distributed streaming offers the potential for powerful cost-savings and no-busy-signal availability, without content owners losing control of distribution. In this panel discussion, four distributed streaming companies showcase their solutions, and discuss some of the issues presented by this new approach to media delivery.
Strom evaluates a variety of P2P file-sharing technologies for corporate and
individual use, based on his own tests and extensive experience with these and similar technologies.
There are various P2P file-sharing alternatives available by now. All claim
to be open, extensible, minimal footprint, universal across various
operating systems, and other qualities. But which one(s) really are usable,
reliable, and workable solutions? Which ones are more appropriate for individuals, and which ones are more appropriate for more corporate settings? Strom evaluates a variety of P2P file-sharing technologies for corporate and individual use, based on his own tests and extensive experience with these and similar technologies.
Strom discusses whether specific P2P technologies offer something over the standard email attachments, or Internet/ftp-based file sharing solutions. He assesses whether any of these companies still be in business by the time of the conference.
Larry Lessig describes the changes in law and technology that threaten the innovation commons created by the Internet.