A study on P2P platforms for rapid application development

This paper proposes a software interface model to be used for quickly constructing peer-to-peer (P2P) application systems. In the near future, it is expected that a lot of devices such as sensors, processing chips and wearable computers will be connected to each other and organized into an ubiquitous network. Considering that P2P technologies are the key to an ubiquitous communication world in which various network entities dynamically form e-communities by cooperating with each other, the model contains essential P2P-handling functions as an application program interface and conceals complicated behavior. Achieved by the development of collaborative applications, its effectiveness is shown by comparisons with off-the-shelf P2P products from the viewpoints of communication performance and software development productivity. In regard to the collaborative functions, the model is effective for developing an application within a short term and can maintain an acceptable level of communication performance, although the relationship between productivity and performance is usually trade-off.