IP Convergence: Beyond VoIP, Beyond Cost Savings

P2P and M2M to change the Internet

I betcha all the money in my first left pocket right now that David Isenberg is becoming more and more giddy watching current Internet technologies evolve.  As you may or may not know, David Isenberg made his name while an employee at AT&T Labs. He wrote a paper titled, ‘Rise of the Stupid Network’.  I suspect David’s giddiness due to a gathering momentum around two technologies in particular: P2P and M2M.  P2P means peer-to-peer.  M2M means, well it stands for a lot of things actually.  The more popular definition is machine-to-machine. ANTI-anything resembling a “Central Server” or “Central Data Repository” is the core of both principles.  It didn’t really dawn on me that we were in the midst of the surge toward the network that David describes until I observed some events.  First was noticing that Henry Sinnreich started working for Adobe this past fall.  The second was a lot of activity around P2PSIP within the IETF.  P2PSIP will be a new working group that will start up at the next IETF meeting.  Lastly was an article I read last night in Business Week magazine, where the M2M marketspace and current interest from Capital markets was reported.

First is Henry and Adobe – as was recently reported on Om Malik’s blog, Adobe has quietly been working on some deals and technologies that drives one to scratch there head considering Adobe’s heritage as an artsy, niche graphics design company at heart. P2P technology and Adobe just isn’t obvious, but it’s potential is brilliant!  Adobe has the enabling tools for the development of content, and it’s not focusing on the tools to deliver the content. In the meantime, Adobe has signed an agreement with Verisign (also in Om’s blog), to leverage their Content Delivery Network.  Short-term tactic to get moving, and long-term vision in P2P – that makes sense to me.

Now for the P2PSIP work within the IETF.  Initially, I was confused about the purpose around this working group, but just like whenever an interesting gaggle of folks congregate and stare into the sky, I had to waltz on over to see what everyone was gazing at.  After all, it had something to do with SIP, so I figured it was right up my alley.  Still confused I just monitored and lurked for a bit, reading through the email threads and seeing some rather influential people participating in the discussions.  First person to catch my eye was Henry. (see above paragraphs)  Then a veritable who’s who within the SIP community started piping in.  Still on the “where there’s smoke, there’s fire” notion, it dawned on my that this wasn’t some simple Academic exercise, but rather something greater is going on with Internet technologies, and here it is evolving before our very eyes. The crux of the P2P and M2M argument lies that there can not and should not be some central "thing in the sky" that end points should depend on to communicate. If that is the case, then there's a need for someone or something to own that "thing in the sky" and that's where things get ugly real quick. Just meander over to the world of ENUM and look into the problems with Infrastructure ENUM. There's a lot of work ahead for P2PSIP, but if nothing else, the formation of this working group speaks to the importance of the work.

Lastly was the M2M article in this week’s (2/5/07) Business Week magazine.  If I want to read about something pertaining to my work and the technologies that affect what I do everyday, I don’t usually pick up Business Week.  My time spent with Business Week is intended to catch me up on what’s going on in the rest of the world while I focus on “nerd stuff” as my significant other likes to say.  To my surprise, in the M2M article was both.  Business Week reported on M2M because it’s moving mainstream.  Folks are witnessing major momentum, and predicting significant market opportunities for companies that develop M2M technology.

There are very smart people, very forward-thinking companies and economics to justify interest surrounding sister technologies P2P and M2M.  And this all support’s David’s claim from 10 years earlier that the network will become dumb!  These are interesting times we live in!

Adam “voiploser” Uzelac