P2P Grows Up

An article from Technology Review asserts that peer-to-peer networks have a lot more to offer than sharing music or even movies. Among the creative uses being found for P2P networks are:

• Internet telephony (Skype)
• Academic research (LionShare)
• Collaborative spam filtering (Vipul's Razor)
• Data backup (Magic Mirror)

It shouldn't be surprising that P2P has caught on so. Massive distribution, redundancy, low cost of ownership and scalability all make P2P attractive... and what made the Internet itself so powerful in the first place.