[Sigia-l] Findability

[Listera]

"Laura Norvig" wrote:

> I don't know if Kaazaa has this feature.

One of the advantages of P2P structures is that you can find a node through
one type of (rough) search and then more closely examine the contents of
that node separately, without taxing a central server/resource. It's
technically trivial to provide that (since node contents have to be indexed
and available at some point). However, not all post-Napster P2P clients
allow that. On OSX for example, Acquisition doesn't, but Neo and Pitbull do.
Architecturally, node indexes (your sharable file list) can be accessed from
a central server (I think Napster kept a central copy but served it locally)
or kept locally but made available to searching clients when requested
(Gnutella). In the latter case, when a search is initiated, requests go to
an expanding number of linked peers in proximity. Obviously, there are pros
and cons of each approach for scalability, efficiency, completeness, and
(dare I say :-) 'findability'.

Best,

Ziya