Courtesy: JXTA.ORG

Project JXTA started as a research project incubated at Sun Microsystems under the guidance of Bill Joy and Mike Clary. Its goal is to explore a vision of distributed network computing using peer-to-peer topology, and to develop basic building blocks and services that would enable innovative applications for peer groups. The project specification and implementation code can be found at www.jxta.org. This open source project is licensed under the Apache Software License, encouraging others to join in the effort. The project is evolving daily.

JXTA is short for Juxtapose, as in side by side. It is a recognition that peer to peer is juxtapose to client server or Web based computing — what is considered today’s traditional computing model.

Some common applications are collaboration on projects from anywhere using any connected device; sharing compute services, such as processor cycles or storage systems, regardless of where the systems or the users are physically located; communicating with colleagues across the world using a peer-to-peer network; sharing files and information to distributed locations on the network, not just to local hard drives; playing games so that multiple people in multiple locations can play the same game interactively; distributed searching and indexing; communicating device-to-device; Web services; and new forms of content sharing and delivery.