Perhaps not. I’ve commented in the past about the effects that P2P networks have upon the ISP traffic topologies (timing, upstream/downstream biases etc.) and we all know they can be used to illegally share copyrighted files. However, I strongly believe that P2P applications are the prototype for the next generation of highly resilient and scalable internet applications. In my former job as a telecomms researcher at TSSG we came up with quite a novel approach to integrating active networking and peer-2-peer apps at the top of the stack. I’m not sure what became of that work but my faith in the technology hasn’t waivered.
I guess that’s why I was so fascinated by the following post on boing-boing about 2 Princeton researchers who’ve cooked up a P2P app in 15 lines of concise Python code. The original post is located on Ed Felton’s blog. It was damn funny to see someone hack up a Perl version in 9 lines. Without disrespect, the python implementation is more legible but the Perl code wins my “tight code” Award for 2004. Matthew Scala has a well used styrofoam cup with an strategicaly embedded 1/2 fried 2Mb Dimm (circa 1993) winging its way to him at this very moment. Enjoy! What a prize and what a hack 😀
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