Hi all,
i’m doing research into p2p networks and i was wondering whether there were any popular p2ps before napster came along?
thanks,
Mogiaw
You need to define your terms better. Appletalk was one of the early PtP networks for consumer computers that was common but but I suspect you mean over the Internet. FWIW Napster is not a network, but an application that works over an existing network.
Yeah you’re right. I mean, what was the first popular peer to peer filesharing software for use over the internet?
Usenet.
It may be semantic, but I wouldn’t call Usenet peer-to-peer in the same sense as Napster, et al. Usenet uses servers to hold messages. There are multiple servers which propogate messages so there’s no central repository like a website, but when you download a file that was posted on Usenet, you’re downloading from your Usenet server, not the original poster’s machine. Only in very rare cases would an individual install both a Usenet client and server on the same machine, and as soon as they posted, their message would be transferred and stored on all the other Usenet servers anyway, so very few other clients would be hitting their server directly. It would seem that the fact that every client is also a server is the defining feature of peer to peer networks.
On the OP, I don’t have a good answer. I guess you could make the argument that something like Gopher really was first if you go back far enough in time that pretty much every machine connected to the Internet was running that service, but I’m not sure that’s true. Napster was the first peer-to-peer filesharing app, in the sense I think you’re using that term, to get my attention, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn of others that preceeded it.
I get the feeling that imesh was around before Napster. I could just be remembering incorrectly though.
Underlying Usenet, it but also it’s own app, was UUCP: Unix-to-Unix-copy which could be set up for automated file sharing.
I actually consider the Internet itself (in the old days Arpanet) to be a peer-to-peer file sharing network. Good old ftp. It was with the Internet that the distinction between “client” and “server” became blurred hence making “peer-to-peer” just a catch all phrase for file sharing.
Given any networking system, FIDO, BitNet, whatever, people will swap files. One of the issues is finding the files. Archie for ftp was one of the first great “find files that have names like this” apps.
IRC.
My money would be on the Incontinents Anonymous/Bladder Control Support Clinic mailing list swap.
<rim shot>
RR
File sharing was done on bullitin board services long before the internet became popular. Computers back then didn’t have the horsepower to run audio applications but pictures, programs, and all sorts of things were shared very similar to the way napster used to be used to share music. This was back in the days of the 8 bit computers (Commodore, TRS-80, Atari, etc) so the internet as we know it now didn’t even exist then. People kept track of BBS phone numbers much the same way that people keep track of URLs now, except back then you couldn’t just bookmark something in your explorer window.
But this is kind of like the Usenet example above. It’s not peer-to-peer in the same way Napster is. You dial into a BBS and upload a file. Someone else dials in and downloads a file. The BBS is a server and the clients (peers) never communicate directly. This is a distinct topology from a peer-to-peer network in which each node is capable of both retrieving and providing files directly to another node.
In big-picture terms, all network protocols, the Internet, the web, etc. are peer to peer in that any of them would allow me to get a file from you. But if there’s some intermediary storing the file such as a webserver, Usenet server or BBS, that’s not “peer to peer” in the sense the OP intends (in my interpretation of the OP) even if the end result is the same.
First popular p2p app? The one and only Napster. It crossed over into mainstream, non-geek life.
Peer-to-peer' has a rather specific definition that's being trampled in this thread. In a true P2P system, everyone has the same importance to the network. Hence the name: peer’ referrs to status, meaning someone has the same status as you. Peer-to-peer, therefore, means all transactions happen between systems of the same status, or importance, on the network. There are no clients or servers, not even nameservers used to route requests.
Therefore, Napster, with its central nameservers, is not peer-to-peer. It’s close, though. KaZaA is peer-to-peer, and it probably was one of the first popular peer-to-peer filesharing networks, if not the first.
But all networks on the Internet are using an underlying network, TCP/IP, that is not peer-to-peer. In the TCP/IP protocol, there are backbone systems that handle all traffic that goes more than a certain `distance’ on the network. There are systems of varying levels of importance on any TCP/IP network, so the TCP/IP protocol cannot be considered peer-to-peer. If you want to be that pedantic, there has never been a popular peer-to-peer filesharing network.
What is P2P … and what isn’t. – The best article I’ve found to clear up the confusion about peer-to-peer networks.
Napster relied on a central server, although the actual data being transferred was on each person’s individual machine. Usenet isn’t peer to peer either. It makes copies of every message and every server has a copy, plus it was originally only used for text messages. Bullitin board systems were much more popular at the time and were used for things more similar to what Napster was used for.
If you want something closer to peer to peer, I would say ftp was it. People were doing ftp peer to peer transfers across the internet long before “internet” was a popular word. Most ftp servers had a /pub directory and would let you access it through a guest account. In the early days of the “internet” as we know it, ftp was still more popular than html transfers. They sent out a message across usenet on the day that www transfers exceeded ftp transfers.
VTAM
- ::: d & r ::: *
SneakerNet
While this may have been said in jest, I believe it’s very true. Before modems were ubiquitous, software for microcomputers was shared by making physical copies of your friends’ floppy disks and tapes. Because there was no central repository of software, the system was indeed peer-to-peer.
With some computers acting as supernodes is it really true peer-to-peer?
To actually answer in the spirit of the OP, instead of just trying to be clever, Scour.Net was a popular “P2P” network that peaked around 1997. It was basically a frontend for Windows file sharing. Upon your request, your computer’s shares were added to a database on a central server, which users could then search via a web interface. When a match was found, you clicked a link which fired up the Scour.Net downloader program, and it initiated the SMB download for you. Not as advanced as Napster, but definitely a spiritual ancestor an definitely popular–popular enough to be shut down by the RIAA.
Therefore, not P2P.
It isn’t hard to figure out, it’s just that nobody has. 
I did not know that KaZaA has supernodes. It isn’t P2P, if that’s the case.
I guess the OP asked a trick question. There hasn’t been a popular P2P filesharing network. Some have come closer than others, though.
I think that would be as interesting a topic for the paper as any: Stand up all potential candidates, then knock them down one by one.