JXTA in a Nutshell

Peergroups

Peers self-organize into groups. JXTA does not define what these groups are, nor why they exist: the JXTA framework supports the creation of groups and the definition of group membership, but it is up to cooperating peers to define groups, join groups, and leave groups. Among other purposes, peergroups serve to:

Define a set of services and resources

In order to participate in an auction, a peer must find a JXTA peergroup that provides an auction service. The peer must join that group; only peers that have joined the group can use the services available in the group.

There are a number of important resources that exist within each peergroup. A service is a specific type of JXTA resource. A peer that wants to use the resources of a particular peergroup must join that peergroup. Similarly, peers can communicate only with each other if they have joined the same group (although, as we’ll see, all peers belong to the NetPeerGroup, so they can always communicate with each other).

Provide a secure region

Because of their membership requirement, peergroups form an entity with a logical boundary. Peergroups may strongly enforce a membership requirement so that the boundaries define a secure environment as well: content within a peergroup can be accessed only by peers belonging to that group, so a peergroup with strict membership requirements can secure its content from the rest of the world.

The underlying network topologies of peers within a peergroup do not necessarily ...