Improved p2p searching. More comments on
JXTA and GNUT.
Greg
>>+ Sun Buys Peer-to-Peer Start-Up Infrasearch, Ditches Gnutella
>> By Kevin Murphy
>>
>>Sun Microsystems Inc last week pounced on one of the most prominent
>>developers of peer-to-peer platforms, in an all-share acquisition that
>>will see nine-month-old Infrasearch Inc ditch the Gnutella protocol with
>>which it has become synonymous in favor of Sun's nascent JXTA.
>>
>>The acquisition will provide Sun with 14 engineers and a developing
>>distributed search technology, which will become a "core part" of the
>>company's JXTA peer-to-peer framework. But Ingrid van den Hoogen, Sun's
>>director of marketing and business development for Project Juxtapose,
>>said that the Gnutella protocol, which has formed the underpinnings of
>>Infrasearch's work so far, will not be used in JXTA.
>>It seems JXTA itself will include a protocol used for communication
>>between peers. It is unclear whether the open-source Gnutella will be
>>used as a basis for Sun's Project Juxtapose, but the firm has committed
>>to release the research under the Apache open source license next month.
>>It has selected online collaborative environment provider Collab.Net Inc
>>to host the project.
>>According to van den Hoogen, JXTA can be envisaged as a communications
>>platform "at the bottom of the stack" on top of which applications such
>>as instant messaging or file sharing can be built. Sun is working with
>>several as-yet-unnamed applications developers that are interested in
>>using the platform, she said.
>>All that is known about JXTA so far is what Sun chief scientist Bill Joy,
>>who is heading up the project, revealed at the O'Reilly Peer-to-Peer
>>Conference in San Francisco two weeks ago. It will comprise four main
>>concepts. There will be a method for passing information between
>>processes in connected peers, described as being similar to the Unix
>>"pipe" interprocess communications function.
>>There will also be a method of grouping peers, and grouping groups of
>>peers, in a dynamic fashion, so peers can automatically discover related
>>peers. There will also be a framework for monitoring and metering
>>policies between connected peers, and some kind of security layer sitting
>>underneath everything. More details will be released next month.
>>Since Sun has its sights set on creating its own "lingua franca" separate
>>from Gnutella, it would seem it is Infrasearch's search engine technology
>>that is the main target of the acquisition (other than the talent).
>>Infrasearch and founder Gene Kan, who is something of a spokesperson for
>>commercialized Gnutella, have been somewhat quieter about the project
>>since the company first launched in June.
>>But at launch, the system was described as a method of allowing real-time
>>searching of online databases to give a fresher, deeper search than the
>>monthlong spider cycles of the major search engines, which generally only
>>skim the surface of web sites. Each company that wanted to participate in
>>Infrasearch would turn the site into a Gnutella peer by installing the
>>relevant software, and it could then be searched real time by connected
>>user peers.
>>Infrasearch's initial investors include high-level executives from
>>Loudcloud Inc and Excite@Home Corp, as well as the venture capital firm
>>Angel Investors LP. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
>>kevin.murphy@computerwire.com
>>
-- Gregory Alan Bolcer | gbolcer@endtech.com | work: 949.833.2800 Chief Technology Officer | http://www.endtech.com | cell: 714.928.5476 Endeavors Technology, Inc. | efax: 603.994.0516 | wap: 949.278.2805
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:13:50 PDT