[p2p-hackers] P2P or centralized

[Salman Abdul Baset]

>>>  Anyway, just pushing back on the religion that P2P has developed.
>>> It's
>>>  fun.  It's sexy.  It's really hard.  But it's often pointless.
>>
>> The advantage of p2p is that it reduces cost of entry in a certain
>> market
>> space. No one denies that anything p2p cannot be done central. However,
>> sometimes economics justify using p2p as a solution. And in Skype's
>> case
>> experience gained from Kazaa was no doubt helpful.
>
> What economic argument could possibly support the avoidance of central
> rendezvous?  Servers are cheaper than engineers.  By orders of
> magnitude.  Building and maintaining complex p2p systems requires
> hundreds of engineer hours, billed at high rates.  A server costs
> $50/month.  Even if you only value your time at $5/hour, if it saves you
> 10 hours a month, it saves you money.
>
> Economics are unquestionably on the side of appropriate use of central
> services, bootstrapping, authentication, and rendezvous being the big
> three.  What numbers are you using that oppose this?

None. Maybe, we missed each other but I had mentioned in earlier posts 
that these three require centralized service for Internet scale 
deployment.

What does not necessarily require a centralized service is a central file 
repository for filesharing, or a central media relay to support call 
establishment for nodes behind NATs/firewalls. It is in these contexts 
that I prefer a p2p solution to a centralized one.

-s