A P2P platform as a digital eco-system approach for collaborative and ubiquitous computing

Abstract

With the fast growth of Internet infrastructure and the use of large-scale complex applications from industries, transport, logistics, government, health and businesses, there is an increasing need to design and deploy multi-featured networking applications. Important features of such applications include the capability to be self-organized, decentralized, integrate different types of resources (PCs, laptops, mobile and sensor devices), and provide global, transparent and secure access to resources.Moreover, such applications should support not only traditional forms of reliable distributing computing and optimization of resources but also various forms of collaborative activities such as business, online learning and social networks in an intelligent and secure environment. In this paper we present the JXTA Overlay, a JXTA-based P2P platform designed with the aim to leverage capabilities of Java, JXTA and P2P technologies to support distributed and collaborative systems. The platform can be used not only for efficient and reliable distributed computing but also for collaborative activities and ubiquitous computing by integrating in the platform end-devices. The design of an user interface as well as security issues are also tackled. We evaluate the proposed system by experimental study and show its usefulness for massive processing computations and e-Iearning applications.Index Terms-P2P Systems, JXTA-Overlay, Digital Eco Systems, Java Applications, End-device Control, SmartBox. I. IN TRODUCTIONThe Internet is growing every day and the performance of computers and networks is significantly increased enabling the development of complex, large-scale applications. We are currently witnessing an increasing need to design and deploy multi-featured networking applications instead of stand alone applications for specific needs. Such applications com bine different paradigms and are developed using various technologies with the aim of achieving a multi-disciplinary view. The digital ecosystems [5], [8], [10], [20] are emerging as a paradigm for supporting multi-disciplinary and multi paradigmatic applications capable of being adaptive and socio technical, having properties of self-organization inspired by natural ecosystems. Important features of such applications include the capability to be self-organized, decentralized, scalable and sustainable as well as integration of different types of resources (PCs, laptops, mobile and sensor devices) providing global, transparent and secure access to resources. Supporting various forms of collaborative activities such as business, on-line learning and social networks in an intelligent and secure environment is also important in such systems. In fact, digital ecosystems are considered as the next generation of collaborative environments.The development of such applications requires the combi nation of many computing paradigms and technologies such as Web, mobile and sensor technologies to achieve ubiq uity features. However, current Internet architecture based on Client/Server t...