The Future of the Peer-to-Peer Paradigm
Ralf Steinmetz
TU Darmstadt
http://www.kom.tudarmstadt.de/People/Staff/Ralf_Steinmetz/ralf_steinmetz.html
This presentation sheds light on the technical background as well as
some details of popular peer-to-peer systems. Peer-to-peer is more
than a simple file sharing approach; it is a change of paradigm.
The peer-to-peer paradigm is reviewed starting with a specification
which comprises very different types of resources. File sharing is
just one of those; however all has its roots in the file sharing
systems. The first large-scale peer-to-peer file sharing system,
Napster, is shown. Henceforth, the principle of more actual approaches
like eDonkey, KaZaA and Gnutella are discussed. GRID computing has
similar (but, also diverse) goals; the relationship between GRID and
peer-to-peer is described. Peer-to-peer is an interesting and timely
research field, hence we conclude with where peer-to-peer could have
major influence in the future and we present a set of open research
issues.
-----------------------------------------------------Prof. Ralf Steinmetz worked for over nine years in industrial research and development of
distributed multimedia systems and applications. He has been head, since 1996, of the
Multimedia Communications lab at Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.
From 1997 to 2001 he directed the Fraunhofer (former GMD) Integrated Publishing Systems
Institute IPSI in Darmstadt. In 1999 he founded the Hessian Telemedia Technology Competence
Center (httc e.V.). His thematic focus in research and teaching is on multimedia communications
with his vision of real "seamless multimedia communications". With over 200 refereed
publications he has become ICCC Governor in 1999; was awarded the ranking of Fellow of both,
the IEEE in 1999 and the ACM in 2002.