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Peer-to-Peer Computing >> Meeting the P2P Challenge

1/31/2005

By Matt Villano

“The tides are turning in our battle against P2P abuses,” says Michael Halm, senior strategist for Teaching and Learning Technologies in the Information Technology Services department on Penn State’s main campus at University Park. “Academics like me used to be powerless against this stuff. Now, finally, we’re gaining the capacity to fight back.”

Clipping Their Wings

At UF, the key to overcoming the morass of P2P file-trading was innovation. After the school’s network performance first plummeted in 2003, Bird and campus programmer Will Saxon decided to develop a solution. The duo already had been working on technology to limit P2P usage; a few months later, with two grants from the university, they devised Integrated Computer Application for Recognizing User Services, or ICARUS. The system, which considers P2P capability a privilege, declines to restrict file-swapping completely but instead attempts to educate students about exchanging files in a manner that is both legal and unobtrusive to network performance overall. So far, it appears to be working: Usage of legitimate systems such as iTunes and Napster is now through the roof, and the average number of nightly illicit P2P users has dropped from 3,500 to 300, a decline of more than 90 percent.

The thinking behind the system is simple—essentially, it is a generic strategy to automate identity management and network compliance. When a student first registers on the campus network, he is required to read about peer-to-peer networks and certify that while he can share academic files, he will not share copyrighted ones. ICARUS then scans the student’s computer, and detects any worms, viruses, or programs that act as servers, such as Kazaa, Cheetah, and Grokster. If the system finds one of these offending programs, it gives the student instructions on how to disable it. After this, if the student logs on and tries to share files, ICARUS automatically sends him an e-mail and a pop-up window warning, then disconnects him from the network.

What is P2P?

Peer-to-peer technology, aka P2P, is, essentially, a computing session that takes place directly from one user to another. The technology’s very name implies that either side can initiate a session and has equal responsibility. As such, a P2P network is a communications environment that allows all desktop and laptop computers in the network to act as servers and share their files with all other users on the network. On a larger scale, peer-to-peer computing is the process of sharing CPU resources across a network so that all machines function as one large supercomputer.

The phrase “peer-to-peer,” however, is a somewhat confusing term, because it always is contrasted with a central system that initiates and controls everything. In practice, with the exception of the decentralized Gnutella P2P technology, two users on a peer-to-peer system often require data from a third computer or third-party server. For example, the Napster file-sharing service was always called a “peer-to-peer network,” but its use of a central server to store the public directory made it both centralized and peer-to-peer.



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