As we continue to make progress on our next version of GoBinder at
Agilix Labs, I am continuing to look at all of the potential plug-ins that
might be attractive to students, and our customer base in
general. One area that I am anxious to explore is Peer to Peer
solutions. I am already looking at the Microsoft Peer to Peer SDK,
and have an initial project that we are going to complete. Once
we have our first P2P plug-in, I want to create the next. Phil,
as usual, has given me an idea of where to look next!
I’ve been interested in distributed back-up systems for some time.
For example, I’d love to see a P2P client given to BYU students that
allows them to commit a percentage of their disk to a distributed
back-up system in exchange for that much storage on the overall system.
Rather than the University having to commit capital to a back-up system
for students files, excess direct-attached disk and software would
solve the problem.I’ve also be enamored with erasure codes
for reliability. Using erasure codes would allow the distributed
back-up network to provide reliable storage in the face of a certain
percentage of nodes going down, leaving the network for some reason,
and so forth.A couple of students in my Middleware class this semester picked
this theme up and did some further exploration. There were a couple of
items that caught my eye.
- PStore
is a secure P2P storage solution from some researchers at MIT. Overall,
the feature set seems quite nice, but the code is not available and it
doesn’t incorporate erasure codes as fas as I know.- DIBS is a similar idea written in python that does use erasure codes. The UI is something only a geek could love.
Apart from being genuinely useful in a campus environment where
its difficult to provide effective back-up solutions for even critical
files, this is an excellent example of a P2P network beyond mere “file
sharing” which has grown to have negative connotations. I’d love to see
the headline “BYU Embraces P2P Technology.”