Brief Introduction of Peer-to-Peer Technologies
What Is Peer-to-Peer?
The term “peer-to-peer” has various meanings under different circumstances, when mentioned in the context of digital and network settings, especially nowadays with the popularity of Internet usage, this term is often used to describe a type of decentralized and distributed network architecture, in which individual nodes in the network act as both suppliers and consumers of data resources (ref.); these nodes, i.e. the “peers”, are actually end-user devices, such as personal computers, PDAs, iPads, and mobile devices with accessibility to Internet.
Initially, when different kinds of end-user devices become common in people’s daily life, they are often connected together through the local area networks to certain central servers to get access to files, videos, audios, and other information. These central servers are typically more powerful than the personal computers, so any large data processing can take place on these central servers, allowing the end-users to download files onto their personal computers.
In contrast to the centralized client–server network architecture, where the clients request access to resources provided by central servers, the peer-to-peer network will “share” the computing power among multiple inter-connected peers, who each make a portion of their resources, such as data computing, disk storage, or network bandwidth etc., directly available to other network participants without the need for any coordination by the central servers (ref.). Under the peer-to-peer network architecture, various end-user devices become much more powerful; they are now able to process the data locally rather than on central servers. As a result, the peer-to-peer...
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...e calls with up to five users with the possibility of text chats and immediate file transferring.
Skype can be integrated with the current distance learning and provides another enriched learning venue. Learners can use Skype to visit other classes via online video/audio conferencing calls across different geographic locations, which makes this particular peer-to-peer technology an excellent tool for foreign language education. For example, a native English (or French) speaker can offer online tutor via Skype to multiple users from non-English speaking countries. Jive Communication is now offering such virtual educational services for individual and institute clients (ref.). Skype is used as a facilitating tool and also a communication channel to coordinate learning activities, as long as the individual and institute clients have access to computers and Internet.
The last few years has seen an explosion in the use of the Internet as a means for exchanging, free of charge, digital media by way of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file sharing technologies. Initially, the practice was primarily limited to the swapping of music, in the form of MP3 files. The pervasiveness of broadband, the advent of newer file types, and the creation of more sophisticated technologies has subsequently made possible the exchange of other types as well – including movies, television shows and software. Again, for free.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have had a staggering growth in the past few years. Since Napster, dozens of P2P networks have been created in its imitation. Due to the growing accessibility of broadband, which increases the speed of downloads, P2P networks generate nearly 1.8 billion downloads per month. Popularity and acceptance is still continually growing.
Recently, there has been a series of copyright infringement litigations against Internet businesses that are involved with unauthorized distribution of music files. The US recording industry claims to lose three million dollars per year because of piracy. A report predicted an estimated 16 percent of all US music sales, or 985 million dollars would be lost due to online piracy by 2002 (Foege, 2000; cited from McCourt & Burkart, 2003) Even though this claim has to be taken with caution, as it is based on false assumption that if copyright laws were strictly enforced, audio pirates would become buyers, it is apparent that audio piracy grew to a worrisome level for the record industry. (Gayer & Shy, 2003)
The efficiency of online learning versus face-to-face instruction is a growing controversial topic. In his article, “Can You Be Educated from a distance?”, James Barszcz weighs the benefits and disadvantages of online education. In his essay, he discusses the fundamentals and overall quality of distance education, as well as the rationale behind the growing trend. He argues that observation of teachers and social aspects of traditional learning are important for true education, rather than simply obtaining information. Barszcz uses thorough juxtaposition between distance and traditional classrooms unbiasedly so the differences between the two types of education are easily seen, while constant use of studies and surveys add justification to his argument.
Students can also interact with each other or teachers using online methods of
A network can be based on either a peer-to-peer level or server-based, also referred to as domain-based. To distinguish the difference, a peer-to-peer network, also known as a workgroup, is a network in which a group of computers are connected together to share resources, such as files, applications, or peripherals. The computers in a peer-to-peer network are peers to one another, meaning no single computer has control over one another. There is also no central location for users to access resources, which means that each individual computer must share their files in order for other computers to have access (Muller, 2003, p.411). “In a peer-to-peer environment, access rights are governed by setting sharing permissions on individual machines.” (Cope, 2002) On the other hand, in a domain-based network, the computers connected together are either servers or clients. All of the other computers connected to the network are called client computers. The server is a dedicated machine that acts as a central location for users to share and access resources. The server controls the level of authority each user has to the shared resources. When logging on to the network, users on client machines are authenticated by the server, based on a user name and password (Lowe, 2004, p.13).
In the mid-1980s, the term P2P, or peer-to-peer, was used by local area network vendors to describe the computing nodes on their networks. Previous to that, the term was used to describe ARPAnet, the military-backed computer network that would become the model for today's Internet[1]. Today however, the term P2P has a very different meaning - it has come to describe applications designed specifically to exploit peer relationships between computers, using the Internet as an extension of the local network[2]. Its primary uses include not only the sharing of huge amounts of information, but also the sharing of free resources on a vast number of computers [3]. The reasons for its success are numerous and the problems that it creates are genuine.
What do P2P, File sharing, and Bit Torrent sites have in common? They all are file sharing websites that you can send and look at files with other billions of people. Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. File sharing is the practice of distributing or providing access to digital media, such as computer programs, multimedia (audio, images and video), documents or electronic books. Bit Torrent is a website used that is kind of like a peer-to-peer file sharing ("P2P") site which is used to distribute data and electronic files over the Internet. Be warned, though because these websites
File sharing popularity increased with the birth of Napster. It allowed users to connect to each other through a central server. Napster pioneered the concept of peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P). With Napster, individual people stored files that they wanted to share (typically MP3 music files) on their hard discs and shared them directly with other people. Users ran a piece of Napster software that made this sharing possible. Each user machine became a mini server.
Structured P2P overlay network have tightly controlled topologies and content is placed at specified locations to efficiently solve queries. Some well-known examples are Content Addressable Network (CAN) [44], Chord [15] and Pastry [45]. Such overlays use a Distributed Hash Table (DHT) as substrate, where data objects (or values) are placed deterministically at the peers whose identifiers correspond to the data object’s unique key. In DHT-based systems, node identifiers are uniform-randomly assigned to the peers from a large space of identifiers. Similarly, unique identifiers, chosen from the same identifier space and called keys, are computed from data objects by means of a hash function. Keys are then mapped by the overlay network protocol to a unique live peer in the overlay network. The structured P2P overlay network support scalable storage and retrieval of {key,value} pairs. Given a key, operations like put(key,value) and get(key) can be invoked respectively to store and retrieve the data object corresponding to the key, which involves routing requests to the peer corresponding to the key. However, they only supports exact matching and are strongly affected by peer churn [31].
Distance learning, sometimes called e-learning, is a formalized teaching and learning system specifically designed to be carried out remotely by using electronic communication. People could find out distance learning on the internet or searching form the school, sometimes teachers would introduce the best or the most credibility distance learning web. Such as class.com and University of Phoenix, etc. Distance learning is less expensive and is not constrained by geographic considerations; it offers opportunities in situations where traditional education has difficulty operating. Students with scheduling or distance problems can benefit, as can employees, because distance education can be more flexible in terms of time and can be delivered virtually anywhere. Under the unified leadership of the distance learning education, the modern distance learning education work gradual increase the number of school has now reached a certain scale. However, not every school or any distance learning education has clear idea for the modern education. Many people have differences understandings and it formed a big deviation. It can be said, for the purpose of developing the distance learning education and the hopes has not formed a consensus, which leads to very often difficult to form in the actual work force.
It simplifies the storage and processing of large amounts of data, eases the deployment and operation of large-scale global products and services, and automates much of the administration of large-scale clusters of computers.
Thanks to the ubiquitous nature of the internet in recent years, the world has become more connected each day. The increased use of the web on a daily basis has opened the doors for teachers to give their students the opportunity to connect with people around the globe without leaving their home country. The internet allows teachers to link their students with students of other cultures in distant countries by utilizing online communication tools. This kind of teaching method is called telecollaboration and has been employed using different formats in classes all over the globe with the aim of developing intercultural competence and foreign language skills, such as e-tandem, virtual online exchanges, collaborative online international learning, and many others. According to Helm (2009), telecollaboration is “an approach to intercultural learning that uses internet technology as a tool to facilitate intercultural communication between classes of learners in different countries.” Numerous studies have shown that telecollaboration has been one successful teaching method to assist foreign language learners in developing this combination of language skills and intercultural awareness (Belz, 2003; Chun, 2011;
The TCP/IP is the most important internet operation protocol in the world. While IP protocol performs the mass of the functions which is needed for the internet to work. It does not have many capabilities which are essential and needed by applications. In TCP/IP model these tasks are performed by a pair of protocols that operate at the transport layer. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP). These two protocols are vital when it comes to delivering and managing the communication of numerous applications. To pass on data streams to the proper applications the Transport layer must identify the target application. First, to be able to attain this, Transport layer assigns an application an identifier. In the TCP/IP model call this identifier a port number. Every individual software process needing to access the network is assigned a un...
In this day and age, networks are everywhere. The internet has also revolutionized around world. We tend to take for grantedthat computers should be connected together. When it comes to networking, it's hard to believe that the field is still a relatively young one, especially when it comes to hooking up small computers like PCs. In approaching any discussion of networking, it is very useful to take a step back and look at networking from a high level. What is it, exactly, and why is it now considered? So, it important that it is assumed that most PCs and other devices should be networked. Computer network is the best way to take advantage of more than one computer resources by sharing these resources , such as storage space ,