Peer-to-peer systems have become synonymous with file-sharing systems. Much of the focus of research in this area has been on providing algorithms to improve the efficiency, robustness, and security of routing in peer-to-peer systems, or designing services such as indexing and search for use by file-sharing applications running on these systems. There has been less focus on discovering new applications or enumerating the characteristics of applications for which peer-to-peer systems provide a viable, if not the only, solution.
The purpose of this talk is to show that peer-to-peer is more that just (illegal) file-sharing. I will review the definition of peer-to-peer and describe a set of characteristics of applications for which peer-to-peer systems are a necessary solution. I will then describe two example applications: LOCKSS, a peer-to-peer digital preservation system, and Blossom, a decentralized peer-to-peer approach to overcoming systemic Internet fragmentation.
Mema Roussopoulos is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science on the Gordon McKay Endowment at Harvard University. Before joining Harvard, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the MosquitoNet Group at Stanford University. She received her PhD and Master's degrees in Computer Science from Stanford, and her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of Maryland at College Park. Her interests are in the areas of distributed systems, networking, mobile computing, and digital preservation.
