Calling P2P: Peer-to-Peer Networks Coming to a Phone Near You

摘要

Napster, KaZaA, and Gnutella have fuelled consumers' passion for downloading and swapping MP3 music files—and BitTorrent and eDonkey are doing the same for video. Now, a handful of upstart vendors are poised to move peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing applications from the wired Internet to the wireless space to create an anywhere, anytime network for content creation and distribution. Mobile phones, PDAs, and other devices are chock-full of features and computing power, and increases in storage capacity make these smart mobile devices the perfect platform for sharing content. "So, the question quite naturally arises whether peer-to-peer activities could be scaled down to mobile devices," observes Bob Emmerson, an independent telecoms consultant based in The Netherlands. "Previously, the computing power was in the central network switch. But, moving ahead, it will all be in the phone. And that's a shift that can either create or destroy value."