Sun opens Pandora’s toolbox for Napster-like web

Peter Henderson

SAN FRANCISCO: Network computer maker Sun Microsystems Inc. on Wednesday opened a toolbox for programmers to build a decentralized, Napster-like Web that it hopes will speed up and deepen the Internet. Rather than anarchy, Sun expects pockets of programmers to build a more secure and reliable network that will include every device imaginable, from computers to kitchen appliances.

"Our goal at the end of this is to build a completely reliable system from unreliable parts," chief researcher at Palo Alto California-based Sun, John Gage, said in an interview. Sun's formula for peer-to-peer computing, which links computers directly to one another without relying on a server to coordinate communication, rests on a small program that sets out how machines will talk to each other.

"The idea is that entities on the Net can find each other and then send information back and forth," said Sun's chief scientist, Bill Joy, who heads Project jxta, pronounced "juxta," which released the protocol, or rules, for peer-to-peer networks.

Sun bets that it will be able to sell more of its Internet-building computers as the Web grows on its software, similar to the strategy it has taken with its Java programming language. Peer-to-peer computing has achieved a kind of cult celebrity because of the notoriety of Napster and a number of companies are looking for commercial applications for the way that it allows individuals to work directly with each other, avoiding mediation - and snoops.

Microchip maker Intel Corp., for instance, has used peer-to-peer technology to link employees' PCs, using the collective power of the herd to design new chips faster. Song-swapping service Napster holds a central index which points members to others who have the songs they want, but members swap directly. Other services avoid a central index, instead passing lists from member to member in a type of computer gossip.

But distributed computing, as peer-to-peer is more formally known, can also ease network bottlenecks by making it possible to break down big programs into lots of little ones which can communicate with each other. "The role of jxta will be as a solvent to dissolve the applications running on the back end into small pieces to run more quickly and more spread out," Gage said.

Sun said that manufacturers could start building jxta into devices from mobile handsets to refrigerators to get them on the web in a year or so. The tiny layer of jxta layer released on Wednesday includes protocols for computers to talk to each other, a way to organize groups within the broader environment, and ways to follow transactions and keep them secure.

"The monitoring and security will ultimately determine the success of the thing," Joy told a Webcast. Sun's archrival Microsoft Corp. also is focusing its energy on making transactions secure with its own plans to build the infrastructure of an always-on, always-connected Web, although as usual Sun dismissed Microsoft's efforts.

Sun will not directly make a profit out of jxta. But jxta, which sets up rules for how computers talk to one another, works especially well when the language computers speak is Java, also developed under Sun's guidance. Sun maintains Java runs best on Sun Microsystems computers.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.