Peer to Peer: Collaboration and Sharing over the Internet

Historical Analogies

Modern peer technologies owe much to what has gone on before, both directly and indirectly. This slight detour outlines some of the precursor technologies and attendant growth of communication infrastructure.

Telephony

The analog telephone was an early extension to direct person-to-person connectivity. In fact, telephony could be considered the first large-scale peer network technology, developed in the dark ages before computers. Although the endpoints were the fixed telephone locations (homes and offices) of the people who wanted to connect, rather than the individuals themselves, most users easily accepted this accessibility limitation, and usage confounded the experts. After all, nobody would ever want to use a telephone ...