JavaOne: TS-7208: JXTA Technology Beyond File Sharing

P2P makes sense now

• more people (and machines) connected, more data at the edge
• more bandwidth
• more computing power

Limitations of Today's Internet

• physical addressing model (URLs, IPs)
• centralized DNS
• no QoS for message delivery
• optimized for point-to-point (limitations on multicast/anycast)
• topology controlled by network admin, not applications
• no search/scoping at network level
• binary security (intranet or internet)

What is JXTA?

• highly decentralized and reliable
• network protocol for creating decentralized virtual P2P network
• set of XML protocols, bindings for any os/language
• overlay network, decentralized DHT routing protocol
• mechanisms, not policies
• open source (want it to become core internet tech, wide adoption)
• www.jxta.org

What is different?

• JXTA addresses dynamically mapped to physical IP
• decentralized and distributed services (ID, DNS, directory, multicast, etc)
• easy to create ad hoc virtual networks (domain)

What JXTA does

• Brings devices, services, and networks together
• enables interactions among highly dynamic resources

Sample applications

• storage backup (321 Inc.'s LeanOnMe)
• Brevient Connect web conferencing
• grid computing - Codefarm's Galapagos
• SNS - social network application (most used P2P app in China)
• Verizon IOBI (trying to lower the cost of delivering content over the Internet)

Tangent: how do china's network filtering/blocking devices work with P2P apps? It seems like China has been doing two things -- trying to censor information coming in from outside of China, and trying to block Chinese-to-Chinese communications, when those communications don't toe the party line. While I won't say that it is impossible to filter/shutdown P2P, it seems like a hard problem.

JXTA status

• JXTA-Java SE (June 15th release 2.3.4)
  • APIs and functionality frozen
  • Quarterly release schedule
  • full implementation of JXTA protocols
• JXTA-C/C++ (2.1.1)
  • standard peer
  • extended discovery
  • linux, solaris, windows
  • rendezvous support
• JXTA-Java ME (2.0)
  • edge peer only
  • CDC 1.1 compliant
• community: C#, JPython

Looking ahead

• enhance ease of use and simplify network deployment
• enhance performance, scalability, security
• standardize specification further through public organization

Summary: I am totally in love with the idea of peer-to-peer, and JXTA has been on my list of things to check out for awhile now. I need to see how I can preach this at EDS.