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

by David Barkai (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
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 on the Internet. Whether you are an application developer, an IT professional, or an end user, this book will help you discover what the P2P buzz is all about. Included are some early success stories and discussions of the challenges still ahead.

Learn about the technologies that form the foundation on which P2P applications can be developed. Read about solutions and innovations from the pioneering work done by the most creative developers in the P2P arena.

This book portrays P2P computing as a viable set of technologies and a computing model for business and the enterprise, as well as for self-organized, self-managed online communities of consumers. P2P is about secure direct exchanges and sharing of resources at the edge of the network. It enhances and complements current network computing in wonderful and exciting ways.

At home and in the corporate world, for e-commerce and for entertainment, P2P enables novel applications and usages in three categories: meaningful collaborations through direct exchanges, relevant content discovery and delivery, and efficient use of shared resources.

Whether you are an application developer, an IT professional, or an end user, this book will help you to discover what the P2P buzz is all about.

About the Author
David Barkai is a member of the Peer-to-Peer Architecture group of Intel Labs. He has also been a content architect for the Intel Developer Forum conference and a software scientist in the Microcomputer Software Lab. Before joining Intel in 1996, David worked for 25 years in the field of scientific and engineering supercomputing for Control Data Corporation, Cray Research Inc., Supercomputer Systems Inc., and NASA Ames Research Center. David holds a Ph.D. in theoretical physics and has more than 20 publications as papers, conference proceedings, and textbook contributions on the subjects of physics, numerical methods, and computer applications and architectures.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 332 pages
• Publisher: Intel Press; 1st edition (March 18, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970284675
• ISBN-13: 978-0970284679
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #104,932 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Popular Science" Overview Book, September 8, 2004

By	M. A. Thompson (Joplin, MO) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Useless if you actually want to set up a peer-to-peer network. This book is an interesting overview and history of P2P, with lots of references to standards groups, but provides no useful hardware, architecture, Internet, operating system or application program information on setting up a real peer-to-peer network, either intranet or Internet based.

Good, but probably an overload, for the casual weekend book browser who wants general information on the origins, concepts, challenges, opportunities and potential (circa 2001/2) of P2P networking.

For general overview, 4 stars. For useful implementation information, zero stars. Average, 2 stars.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars explains common properties of p2p networks, November 20, 2005

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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.