P2P website publishing - the next revolution?
With P2P seeming to be gaining a bigger and bigger slice of attention, I keep wondering what the next P2P applictaion will be.
Like a lot of people I first came across P2P apps with file sharing like Napster and the like. Next i heard it spoken about in enterprise computing discussions, particularly in relation to a supply chain management product i was working on at the time (the guy who was talking about it then was John Ball), but back then I found it hard to grasp how P2P could be turned to anything more than the file sharing apps. How could a P2P platform be used for more than file sharing and actually be used to provide an enterprise computing platform for a set of business process applications? Now, I hear its called grid computing or various other names, Dion Hinchcliffe writes a lot on this subject.
So whats the next applictaion of P2P? Lots of news is out there about Joost (PKA The Venice Project), and its ‘effectively’ P2P TV. It was founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis the founders of Kazaa and Skype.
So here’s the pattern… Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis develop Kazaa (P2P file sharing, not the fist but nonetheless successful). Next they stay in P2P, and develop Skype (P2P computer telephony, VoIP or Voice over IP). Now they remain in P2P again and develop Joost (effectively P2P TV). See the pattern, its like they sit there and say “right, thats done, now what else can we turn P2P to”.
I have a new one, or rather I think Izimi may have a new one…. P2P Web site publishing. Here it is: At the moment websites get hosted centrally, and then distributed time by time upon demand to browsers that request the site’s pages (content).
Now, i contend isn’t that just like old fashioned media broadcast? OK, its not quite broadcast, but its still server to peer; the content gets centrally gathered, then delivered point to point to the media’s consumer.
With Izimi you could self-publish a website right there on your own computer. When you use Izimi to self-publish the content stays on your machine (no uploading to a hosting company) but its available to any one anywhere on the internet with just their browser via a regular URL (no need for them to have any special client software as you would with most P2P apps). You can do this with Izimi now.
But what happens when you turn your machine off? Hosting companies are useful because they give you resilience and allow your website to stay available even when you turn your computer off. Well, if Izimi were to remove that ‘problem’, is it a real alternative for central hosting? Almost.
The other point is bandwidth. When I am self publishing with Izimi it is my bandwidth that is used to deliver content to people who request it. Well, way back when we started Izimi we already had the multipoint download capability (its pretty standard P2P technique to distribute content to various places to allow co-operative supply of content). In this way a person requesting my content could be serviced by a whole bunch of peers in the network each delivering a fraction of the whole website, and this all happens in the background. So, the question of bandwidth becomes a moot one. P2P has always been good at this, so its nothing new.
SO, whats the point of all this? Simple. Izimi just may prove to be the next revolutionary P2P application, and that is website hosting. Afterall, why use a hosting company when you can do it easily yourself with no negative impact?
Strictly speaking of course you’d have to call it something different to P2P. Afterall its not really P2P (peer to peer) its P2B (peer to browser), and that is a GREAT advantage. It truely means that your content/media/website is available to ANYONE ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET - no need for them to first have downloaded your proprietory client. Imagine is you could use Skype, Kazaa, and Joost without any download. Just think how fast and far it would spread.