Hi, (i posted this in another mailing list, but repost it here for more discussion)
Let's look at the "traditional client-server model" in another way, with Google as an example. Apparantly, Google employs a very well-engineered distributed systems with thousands of machines all over the world, but i think in the essence, it still follows a client-server model. All searchs from a Web browser (client) goes directly to a Google server.
We go on and on about how P2P systems allow decentralization of their services, hence difficult to take down and can be immuned from DoS attacks on their availability. Now look at google, i dont know how many times it suffered from such attacks. None ??
What P2P services that google doesn't have ? Global searching ? You're taking about the master here. Global storage system ? Google has no problem in giving you 2-3Gb freely(emails, pictures and other spaces). Sharing ? Google video, Picassa and even Google music.
So i come to think what the future of P2P would be like, especially when the day that all file-sharing networks got shut down by RIAA. In the user point of view, what advantage that P2P systems have over Google (or other client-server modeled system with load of money). Technically, is there any P2P service that cant be provided with equal quality by a very rich company ?
Then, i stopped being depressed for one second, when looking at the security issues. Many ways to define privacy, but for me, it consists of anonymity and unlinkability (no correlation). You won't get anonymity when using Google (search, GMail ...). Is there any truly anonymous P2P systems out there ? At least there are undergoing development for such systems. Correlation is really a pain in the *ss, Google correlates all your search and your mail and store that on the database, it knows you better than you know yourself. Once that database leaks, or got seized by the police, your privacy is seriously violated, and worse thing is that nothing you can do about it. P2P behaves much better in this situation, as your activity (search) were distributed among all other peers, and they won't be interested in keeping your (log) information at all. It's also hard for the police to track down your activity on the net; they'd have to look at other peers' computers as well, and those peers will definitely not give in easily.
In summary, my big question is, will there really be a bright future for P2P ?
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