More on JXTA: a central-server-less technology
For those who may not have done so, a nudge to take a look at JXTA, Sun’s open source p2p technology.
JXTA routes messages peer to peer at the application layer. An important consequence of this is that on JXTA peer networks there are no central application server as we know them. Mail servers have SMTP and POP3 servers, the web has HTTP servers, and Jabber has Jabber servers (or whatever).
JXTA, on the other hand, has a few peers that must be around to bootstrap the network, but they don’t know anything about the applications implemented by their edge peers. Hence, the same bootstrap servers (called relays and rendezvous in JXTA parlance), can be used as is for many JXTA applications without modification.
That is HUGE. All the application logic for JXTA apps lies at the edge. There is no smart, central server — anywhere. JXTA is also supported by an active developer community, and for the last year that I’ve been participating, one can see the platform developers at Sun doing CVS commits 24×7x365. It’s an active, vibrant project, with an open source BSD-like license. Have a look.
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