Hello RIT,
I have actually been presenting and talking about this area for several months now ... and researching it for longer.
There is actually a *very* good fit for Novell and the whole Peer to Peer space. I am internally evangelizing this, but am not sure of the outcome ... very little listening going on in the upper ranks of Novell.
All computer network application can be considered "peer to peer". In fact, a "server" is simply a powerful, scalable peer which has the ability to peer with numerous other peers. It also tends to "source" content more than consume it.
In looking at this model, it is also easy to see that in "peer to peer" computing, there are actual two fundamental components - location services and communications protocols.
The purpose of location services is to locate other peers, or the services/content that they offer. Examples of location services are DNS, and other proprietary examples like the Napster databases, and AIM or ICQ. All of these systems use some mechanism to provide registration and lookup capabilities that will resolve to an IP address and some port.
If we were to look at NDS/eDirectory, or any directory platform, it is an ideal environment to create a "general purpose" and "extensible" location service for authenticated registration and lookups.
So in fact, corporations are already using a "peer to peer" like service when they deploy ZENworks. The workstation agents (peers) use the directory to lookup the information about the configurations, and where to retrieve applications and files. The "peers" that have these apps and files are the "server peers" that are on the net ... and the agent then uses a variety of communications protocols to access and transfer the appropriate stuff.
I have been playing with using NDS/eDirectory in this capacity for years ... and there is even more that can be done.
So unlike what many people think, Novell *could* be heavily into the Peer to Peer space with a real business application and solution. And on top of that, the directory *could* replace the proprietary solutions being developed and deployed by the people claiming to have "peer to peer" solutions ...
Scott C. Lemon |
