A comprehensive look at peer-to-peer from business and technical perspectives; and the state of the industry, with hard data as back-up. The text has statistical and computational techniques tailored for modeling, condensing, summarizing, and forecasting trends in software development.

There's so much buzz about peer-to-peer these days, it's hard to separate facts from fiction. How do the peer-to-peer companies stack up? Which technologies are credible, and which will shake up our notions of how people use computers? More importantly, how do you see through the hype to the underlying architectures that yield opportunities for creating lasting value? The 2001 P2P Networking Overview from O'Reilly Research is a comprehensive look at peer-to-peer from business and technical perspectives. We describe the state of the industry and offer our opinions about where it's going to go next, with hard data to back us up. What you will find in the report: Company profiles; In-depth explanations of the underlying technologies ;P2P services: present and future; Analysis of the hype: what the press gets wrong; Estimates of mindshare and community size; Our forecasts for the field