Most people seem to use P2P to download music and videos. Are there applications for the technology in higher education?
Absolutely. Sharing ideas, resources and information has always been an integral part of academia, and P2P’s content distribution capabilities holds enormous potential for innovation, communication and collaboration. For example, LionShare , a Pennsylvania State University initiative, leverages P2P to allow academics to legally share their course materials, research data, images, videos, Web pages, and other files with other academics and students in a secure environment. Another innovative use is the LOCKSS (“Lots of Copies Keep Stuff Safe”) Project hosted by Stanford University Libraries, which uses a P2P backbone to amass, review, repair and distribute already purchased e-journal content among participating peer institutions. Possibly the most famous, SETI@home , a P2P project hosted by the University of California-Berkeley, leverages a P2P network to gather participants’ unused computing resources to create a supercomputer that examines radio signals from the far reaches of the uni
