P2P Working Group Gets to Work

The P2P Working Group's next meeting is scheduled for May 30-31 in Santa Clara, CA, but unlike previous meetings, expect this gathering to be marked by work rather than politics. At the original meeting, Intel unleashed a firestorm by recommending expensive membership levels for a group that would be under Intel's leadership. The next meeting resulted in an electoral coup, where the membership elected two Intel employees as committee members, but not as chairs of either the steering committee or the technical advisory committee.

Having ratcheted the price of membership down from $50,000 to $5,000 in February, the working group now plans to offer a $500 membership level, according to member Damien Stolarz, engineering lead at Static. In addition, a scholarship option may also be introduced.

With membership effectively democratized, the group is primed to put the emphasis on "working" part of the name. "This will be the first time that we'll have produced work products, and we'll see what value the community places on it. ... We've made some incredible progress, on firewalls and NATs, creating a taxonomy of terminology, security, and distributed file systems. We'll present some notable contributions to the P2P community and say, what else would you like us to work on?"

The technical advisory committee will present a draft of a white paper on firewalls and NAT penetration. "We have some sample code to demonstrate the various techniques," Stolarz said. "I need some cool code hackers to work with the group, take the ideas we've got, and put it in a lib."

While some companies -- especially Microsofts, IBMs, and Suns -- are taking and wait and see attitude towards the working group, Stolarz cautioned that the time to work is now. "I so need help. The Internet Engineering Task Force is asleep at the wheel. NAT totally blindsided them. Microsoft and Intel are going to decide how firewalls are standardized and configured. In two years, that's how 90% of the Internet will work. These things are being decided in closed-door UPNP meetings. We need to get on the ball as a community, where we could at least get an API together. The Web, FTP, etc., all have dynamic allocation of ports -- all of those could be put in one abstract library ... this is really important stuff and we need some programmers."

The existence of the working group is crucial to P2P developers having a voice in how the Internet is wired. "We're absolutely promoting to the little guys. We need the contributions from little guys. That's what the $500 and scholarship levels are about."

The group has also issued a "request for practices" on distributed file techniques. Greg Boulcer of Endeavors has been a strong advocate that at the very least the working group should be a clearing house for good ideas, Stolarz said. "At least get all the ideas, filter them a bit, and put them up so everyone can see."

The release of this work should convince many people that the committee is doing real work and isn't a mouthpiece of Intel. Still with Intel the only major corporation represented on the committees, the perception may remain that Intel exerts a heavy force on the working group. "Intel is doing some hard work on security," Stolarz said. The problem is that unless more companies join, it may still appear to be controlled by Intel, because they'll wind up doing a large percentage of the work. "If the P2P working group evolves into something that creates real work, then they will join. That's the hope."

The meeting consists of a demo day on May 30 and industry perspectives by Andrea Williams Rice of Deutsche Banc Alex Brown and Alex Veytsel of Aberdeen Group. The actual meeting on May 31 consists of a public meeting with TAC and Marketing Committee break-out sessions from 9 am to 3 pm, and a members-only meeting from 3 to 5. To register, visit http://www.p2pwg.org/meetings/. To reserve a space for the demo day, send your contact information to meetings@peer-to-peerwg.org.

Peer-to-Peer Working Group Demo Showcase and Meeting
May 30 - 31, 2001
Santa Clara Marriott
2700 Mission College Boulevard
Santa Clara, California 95054
To reserve a hotel room, call (408) 988-1500.
To register, visit the P2P Working Group Page