Early P2P systems were established in the 1980s for vastly different reasons and applications than seen in today’s new media. Although in the late 1960's the Internet itself was originally designed with P2P connectivity in mind, the first P2P applications, as we know them were implemented roughly two decades ago. They are often not recognized as pioneers in this field because for the most part they were designed for different purposes, mostly as communication devices, rather than the current more widespread use of multimedia downloading. Despite the benefits of managing centralized software, the emergence of successful systems with numerous available, interconnected peers developed. Two decentralized networks of peers, USENET and FidoNet, are credited with beginning the technology of P2P networks.
“USENET began in 1979” (Anonymous, 2004) and is a distributed application that provides newsgroups. USENET’s technology involved files being exchanged in batch over telephone lines. The impracticality of data transfer over a primitive underdeveloped Internet resulted in a decentralized application a feature that is retained by P2P technology to this day. FidoNet is similar to USENET in so far as they are both decentralized, distributed applications for exchanging messages. However, FidoNet focused on exchanging messages between users of different BBS systems.
These early applications faced similar problems to current P2P technology. Scalability was and remains an issue, and there have been numerous security and copyrighting obstacles for current companies to overcome. Despite this, P2P programming has evolved into complex systems where online global communities can access movies, music, games and other digital content. In addition to its communicative and speed-networking advantages, P2P is also commonly used in the business environment because of its ability to effectively link internal company software.
Arguably the most infamous and controversial piece of software to date, Napster, was a file-sharing program that spawned from the.......
