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eLearning Forum Update: Peer-to-Peer

By Jay Cross

Peer-to-peer technology provoked a spirited discussion at the June

eLearning Forum

meeting. Great stuff or pipe-dream?

The

P2P working group

, championed by Intel, says "P2P is the next Internetrevolution." On the other hand, Ziff Davis’s Charles Cooper

reports

corporate"concerns about intellectual property and available bandwidth—in a word: control."

What is P2P?

Computers in a peer-to-peer (P2P) network share resources directly with oneanother, bypassing a central server. Networks are traditionally made up of many PCs(clients) receiving information and access to shared resources from a commoncomputer (a server). Client/server architecture became the norm when client PCswere weaker than servers. However, PCs have increased processing power andgrown tentacles into the Internet, gaining the strength to act as servers or clients.P2P is controversial. P2P PCs can swap files, share disk storage, or use oneanother’s processing power. P2P makes it possible for computers to connect directlyvia the Internet. The benefits are obvious: Users can create online meeting spacesfor project teams without involving IT. Indeed, P2P empowers users whiledisenfranchising IT. And P2P can be a security threat, enabling users to burrowunder firewalls and avoid restrictions.P2P offers several practical applications. Here are some real world examples.

Distributed computing

. The SETI project uses otherwise idle time on tens of thousands of PCs to create the equivalent of a single supercomputer. IBM’smost powerful mainframe, ASCI White, tops out at 12 teraFLOPS; SETI’snetwork works at 15 teraFLOPS. ASCI White costs $110 million; SETI hasspent just $500 thousand.

File sharing and content distribution.

As members arrived for the eLearningForum meeting, pirated music played over loudspeakers. But P2P is a two-waystreet: When I was downloading songs from one of Napster's successors,other people were plucking songs off my

hard drive. We could have beenswapping documents or videos--anything digital. Regulators were able to clampdown on Napster because it had a central server. Napster’s descendants haveno center; there’s no one to sue.

Instant messaging.

When my son is doing his homework, he chatscontinuously with friends online. Most kids use instant messaging becauseemail is too slow; you don’t know if the recipient is around.

Enterprise collaboration.

While other P2P applications have a place in thee-learning toolbox, online collaboration promises to have much more impact onthe way we work and learn.

Why P2P is important

P2P is a breakthrough technology because fluid organizations need flexible IT.Value-chain thinking shows the importance of linking with customers and suppliers,but firewalls insulate corporations as if they were fortresses. Drucker points out thatvalue comes from outside the corporation. Inside the organization, you’re justrearranging the furniture. Corporations praise spontaneity and innovation, but theparadigm drag of client/server views user control as the doorway to anarchy. Thegoal is to have people work in teams, and P2P facilitates team development and

Frontline: eLearning Forum

Jay Cross

is CEO of Internet TimeGroup, a California-based think tank and learning consultancy.Contact him at

jaycross@internettime.com

Editor's note:

This article wasadapted from Cross's white paper,"A Fresh Look at Return on Investment." Additional resourcesare found online at the

Internet Time Group

Website.

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collaboration. (See

The Changing Nature of Work

.)Another factor influencing the growth of peer-to-peer technologies is the idea thatbusiness relationships are two-way and personal. A company often makes a sale andabandons the customer for new prospects. As

The Cluetrain Manifesto

emphasizes,businesses have realized that "Markets are conversations." A sale is the initiation of a relationship for achieving mutual gain over time. A sale is often not just for aproduct or service; it may be maintaining the loyalty of a free-agent worker or inspiring a downstream partner.

P2P in action

When Wayne Hodgins and I planned the eLearning Forum session on P2P, wedecided to "eat our own cooking" and coordinate the session in a P2P environment.Hodgins, a strategic futurist at Autodesk, had been experimenting with Groove, aP2P software platform developed by Lotus Notes author Ray Ozzie. Currently,Hodgins uses Groove to coordinate nine different projects and considers it a moreeffective way to work. Here's how we used it for the meeting.Wayne logged into Groove and emailed an invitation to join him in a new Groovespace. I downloaded the Preview Edition of Groove; it’s 10 MB and free. Then Iclicked on Wayne’s invitation and entered into what appeared to be a Websiteoffering text chat, audio chat, a discussion board, files, a notepad, a sketchpad, ashared Web browser, online file storage, a place for photographs, group calendar,contact list, and a chess game. I learned the basics by pushing buttons andexploring.I sent Groove invitations to Sherry Hsi, president of

Metacourse

;

Hal Richman

, anauthority on collaboration; and Kate Gardner, an e-learning business developer who’sbeen working with eLearning Forum. A few days before the meeting, we all met withWayne online via Groove to get familiar with the Groove environment and discusswho would be presenting.Fast forward to the official meeting. Attendees logged into Groove: Sherry, Kate, andI from Menlo Park; Wayne from Autodesk in San Raphael; and Hal from hisheadquarters in Nova Scotia. My Internet connection wasn’t functioning properly, soSherry stepped in as facilitator.Using

VOIP

, the voices of Wayne and Hal came through loud and clear. It'simportant to note that VOIP saved us an expensive phone bill. Wayne gave a tour of the shared space and explained how he was using Groove on other projects. He alsoseemed adamant about pointing out that Groove is a serious business effort, notingthat its developer Ray Ozzie is a highly respected software architect who ispassionate about creating an industrial-strength collaboration platform.

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Wayne emphasized that P2P technologies can improve the way we work. Moreimportant, P2P merges learning and work, shedding light on team processes thatused to disappear when a project’s participants dispersed. For example, P2Papplications can create an audit trail.Similarly, whenever my company is pushing e-learning to its limits, someone bringsup David Merrill’s caveat that "Information is not instruction." After thirty years inbusiness, my reply is "So?" Whether we achieve better performance throughinstruction, information, or by concocting magic potions is immaterial; performance isthe bottom line.Wayne wrapped up the discussion, and we took a 30-minute break for gossip andcoffee--where the real learning takes place.

The discussion

During the break, people decided they’d heard enough about P2P technology andwanted to discuss behavioral and social implications. I stressed that client/server and peer-to-peer will coexist, following the tradition that TV didn't replace movies.The issue is when to choose one approach rather than the other.Mark Cavender, managing director of Chasm Group, classifies P2P as pre-chasm.Members pointed out the following implementation barriers:It's too weird.People aren't in the habit of working this way.Early training isn't available.Where’s the revenue?Where’s the content?On another track, some people predict that IT will bar use of P2P collaborationbecause it offers hackers and competitors a Trojan horse onto corporate hard drives.Indeed, meeting members were wary about P2P’s security implications. To that,Glenn O’Classen said we needed to take a more adult approach to P2P, and Iacknowledged P2P’s roots in free speech, Open Source, in-your-face, hacker-chicrebellion.Next, Oracle’s John Hathaway challenged my assertion that P2P entails zeroadministration. I replied that P2P applications don’t need IT administration becauseIT isn’t aware of them. With the wisdom of hindsight, I recognize that I was thinkingonly of the early, wild-and-wooly days of P2P. If P2P catches on, of course it willneed administration.Continuing the conversation, Xerox’s Tracy Mendéz said she expects to see moreapplications with functionality similar to Groove, but running on client/server applications, such as Enterprise Blogger or Xerox’s LinkLite. And SRI’s MarceloHoffman thinks P2P will enable communities of practice to form more rapidly.Then Gary Latshaw, formerly with Pensare, compared P2P to telephone conferencecalls. P2P is cheaper but communication costs are trivial in relation to the cost of the people in the conference. Although P2P sound quality isn’t as good astelephone, it’s a great asset to be able to share materials with one another.Moreover, the materials can be spontaneously selected (or maybe even created onthe spot) to suit the situation.Leaving the conversation open, Lance Dublin said he believed that the technologywould grow, but wondered how people would act differently.For more information about P2P, visiteLearning Forum;

www.elearningforum.com/june2001

Internet Time Group;

www.internettime.com/p2p

O’Reilly Open P2P;

www.openp2p.com

Tim O’Reilly’s P2P Meme Map;

www.openp2p.com/p2p/2000/12/05/images/800-p2p2.jpg