May, 2001

In this article:

1. Kazaa
2. Morpheus
3. iMesh

File sharing online, as well as what is technically termed P2P or peer-to-peer, is an area of collaboration and exchange online that is facing a tremendous growth and interest and it will be positively affecting anyone involved in communicating and learning online.

For the ones of you, who have only heard or read about the wranglings of the Napster debate against the music recording industry, and have never tried such services as Gnutella, Wrapster or Imesh, the time has come for you to know more about these powerful and revolutionising technologies.

A great insight into what peer-to-peer file sharing will bring to online communities is well analysed and described by John Thakara in his new article entitled "File Sharing the Future", which you can read at:
http://www.doorsofperception.com/framesets/ bubble_frameset.html
I highly recommend you to read what he says, if you want to see technology for a better and more distant-looking perspective.

For lifelong learners and believers in open sharing of knowledge, this technology really provides a good glimpse at what the future of online collaboration might look like very soon.

I have here selected a few services/tools that can open up your initial interest in peer-to-peer file sharing, and which I have personally tested and used.

Most of these technologies are still in their infancy stage, so I do not recommend the adventure for the technophobes among you as indeed you may run into some errors, conflicts with other programs and yes, a few computer crashes. While as a "pathfinder" I must endure this and more (I have to reformat my PC more than a few times a year) you can simply enjoy the tour or opt-in to follow me right through it.

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This is the future. The concept is great. In fact, it was born as the same concept that gave birth to the net. As you may already well know, the internet was made during the cold war, mainly to provide an automated-protection system to be utilised to communicate in case of nuclear strike.

Previous computer networks consisted of one master computer and a group of "dumb" computer terminals connected to it. In this setup, if the master computer gets hit, then it's all over. The whole "network" goes down, as there is only one "intelligent" station.

On the other hand, on the net, each and every server has the options to enable the standard protocols (telnet, gopher, ftp, http, etc.), so if somebody destroys or handicaps any server, all the other ones are still up and running.

Following this principle, peer-to-peer networks allow users to exchange files and data without going through any centralised mechanism or technology. The internet protocol itself allows individual users to connect directly to one other and to initiate exchanges and file transfers of any kind at their will. If you add to this:

a) the ability to easily search across this distributed network for specific content;

b) the technological facility to download the same content from multiple users simultaneously, as to lighten the bandwidth load on their computers as well as to speed up the overall process;

c) the option of directly contacting individual users, and to exchange messages or to even chat directly with them, you effectively start creating and developing a collaboration network in which the power is the distribution and accessibility of knowledge and content.

In my personal opinion nothing should be feared in general about the issues of P-2-P or file sharing. Until you come to talk about copyrights. But that is an altogether different story.

The best thing that can be done for the moment is for many, many people to download P-2-P software, run their own nodes, and begin posting data to any of these free exchange networks.

Once the content is there, good quality client software will follow.