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Piece Provided by TheFeature.com
Utilizing Intelligence at the Network’s Edge
By Bryan Morgan
Mobile Peer-to-Peer applications introduce a new kind of
network. Here's how they work, and what applications to look
out for.
In the year 2000, just as the first frenzied New Economy
wave was about to come crashing down, two technologies
generated enough hype to rise above the hoopla. These two
technologies, wireless data and peer-to-peer (P2P)
computing, now promise to merge - creating a new breed of
applications that, until now, were only dreamed of in science
fiction novels.
For those not familiar with the ins and outs of P2P, it
represents a new way of thinking about application
architectures and web services. The more traditional mode of
application architecture popularized over the past 20 years
(known as client/server computing) served to relegate
devices on the edge of the network (such as personal
computers, PDAs, and mobile phones) to purely client status.
While the traditional client/server model makes sense for
many applications given the centralized nature of enterprise
data centers, it fails miserably at tasks such as community
information sharing, distributed computing (also known as
grid computing), and transient node utilization. At a high
level, the P2P model excels in these types of applications
because it places the emphasis on utilizating all of the
available resources on both ends.
In addition, P2P allows all participants to become both clients
and servers – allowing the masses to democratically utilize
massive amounts of distributed computing power and
storage.
While many of us are familiar with revolutionary P2P
file-sharing technologies such as Napster, other P2P
applications are also being developed that offer the potential
of unprecedented access to information and processing
power from mobile devices. Here are a few examples:
JabberCE - Among the most obvious of P2P apps is instant
messaging and this Jabber client for Windows CE supports
interoperation with AOL IM, ICQ, IRC, and MSN Chat. Less
known, but even more interesting, is the fact that Jabber can
be used as a messaging transport for any type of
XML-formatted data.
Sun Microsystems' Jini - Jini network technology provides
a simple infrastructure for delivering services in a network
and for creating spontaneous interaction between programs
that use these services regardless of their hardware/software
implementation. An example of a Jini implementation would
allow your PDA to dynamically load print drivers to a laser
printer as you entered an office so that your device is ready
to print when you are. The combination of both Jini and
Bluetooth has tremendous potential.
SmartPeer - This application can reside on a mobile device
and within a network appliance connected through the
Internet to one or more inventory or point-of-sale systems. A
query from a SmartPeer-equipped mobile device could
receive asynchronous results after one or more SmartPeer
appliances have searched applicable inventory systems.
Pocit Labs BlueTalk - BlueTalk supports the creation of
ad-hoc networks between users and services via Bluetooth.
The commercial application will be available for both
PocketPC and EPOC devices in the fall of 2001.
Roku Platform - The Roku Access and Share products use
the PC as the focal point of a distributed information
architecture. The platform uses the PC as a hub to aggregate
information, from which multiple mobile devices can access it
when convenient or required.
Not as well-defined, yet perhaps even more certain, is the
eventual fusion of P2P applications and wireless personal
area networking technologies such as Bluetooth and 802.11b.
One obvious application would be the oft-cited mobile
commerce example of purchasing goods, such as books,
using your mobile phone. Your device instantly connects to
the local network as you enter the bookstore and
interchanges data with the bookstore’s register as you
checkout. Your personal payment information (credit card
info, for instance) is exchanged using a P2P app with the two
devices both acting as clients and servers.
Likewise, personal preferences stored on your device could
interact with passing storefronts via an intelligent P2P agent
to notify you of pertinent items on sale inside.
Inevitably, just as we saw wireless become a victim of its
own hype over the past year, P2P is now also suffering from
a backlash of sorts. Witness the recent legal travails of
upstarts such as Napster and it is clear that P2P applications
can be built to push both technological and legal boundaries.
Taken as a whole, however, the best P2P applications offer
the potential to level the playing field, whether that be for an
end user, a distributed cluster of personal computers, or
mobile devices roaming in and around the network’s edge.
Bryan Morgan was the founder of WirelessDevNet.com (The
Wireless Developer Network) and is currently an independent
writer and software developer. He is a columnist for Wireless
Internet magazine and is also a regular contributor to
WirelessWeek.com and InformIT.com.
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