[DMCA-Activists] SIPShare: "VoIP" Distributed File Search from Earthlink

[Seth Johnson]

Ah, this is such an evil, criminal application.  And you can tell
Earthlink is really just out to corrupt our youth.  They're such
terrible actors.  Can't fool me.  Probably teaching them
INDUCTIVE reasoning or something . . . get the hemlock, we'll
force them to drink it, we will.  Damn troublemakers . . .


Seth


> http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/


SIP Beyond Voice and Video

Standards-based Distributed Networking
from EarthLink Research and Development

Introducing EarthLink SIPshare

EarthLink SIPshare, a simple, SIP-based
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3261.txt?number=3261)
proof-of-concept content sharing application, demonstrates the
viability of SIP as a protocol over which peer-to-peer (P2P)
applications other than the well-known voice and video cases may
be implemented. (SIPshare is not a supported EarthLink product.
Please see the Disclaimer below).

Features

    * Peer discovery - Given a few bootstrap hosts, peers learn
of other peers using standard SIP messages.
    * Fully distributed content search - Searches for content are
distributed across the network from one peer to another, on
behalf of a third peer.
    * File Transfer - As a proof-of-concept application, share
documents, photos, and other files with peers on the network via
standard SIP messaging, and completed using a simple UDP-based
file transfer protocol.
    * Standards based - Network assembly, search, and download
are all established using standard SIP messaging.
    * Cross-platform - Written in Java, so EarthLink SIPshare
runs on many platforms --- without modification.

Motivation

EarthLink believes an open Internet is a good Internet. An open
Internet means users have full end-to-end connectivity to say to
each other whatever it is they say, be that voice, video, or
other data exchanges, without the help of mediating servers in
the middle whenever possible. We believe that if peer-to-peer
flourishes, the Internet flourishes. SIPshare helps spread the
word that SIP is more than a powerful voice over IP enabler ---
much more. SIP is a protocol that enables peer-to-peer in a
standards-based way.

The emerging ubiquity of SIP as a general session-initiation
enabler provides a rare opportunity to offer users all manner of
P2P applications over a common protocol, instead of inventing a
new protocol for each new P2P application that comes along.

EarthLink wants to point the way and aid the cause of these new
applications by demonstrating in open source working code that
SIP can host poweful applications beyond those that immediately
come to mind, that is, voice and video.

We chose file sharing to illustrate how SIP can be used to build
an alternate P2P application, but file sharing itself is not the
point --- file sharing, of course, has been done. EarthLink
SIPshare demonstrates that it is conceivable that voice over IP,
where voice is just content of a different form, itself can be
implemented using SIP in a fully standards-based P2P network. In
other words, the effect of Skype, but with one important
difference: using standards-based protocols, as EarthLink
SIPshare does for content sharing.

We are not the first to consider voice over P2P
(http://vop2p.jxta.org/servlets/ProjectHome), or alternate P2P
implementation methods
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/references.html), but we
want to help herald the possibilities with an application like
EarthLink SIPshare. SIP is too important to consider use only for
voice, or only for video.

Implementation

EarthLink SIPshare uses stateful SIP Subscribe/Notify to build
and maintain a network of peers, and stateless Subscribe/Notify
(http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3265.txt) to implement content search
on that network. Content searches are passed from one peer to all
other known peers in such a way that content can be located on a
host of which the original requesting peer is not explicitly
aware. Once content is located, a SIP Invite is used to request
the content from the now-known host.

EarthLink SIPshare is written for Java 2 Standard Edition, and
runs on any platform for which a J2SE virtual machine is
available, which includes Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Microsoft
Windows. Where SIP application programming is concerned, SIPshare
uses the NIST implementation of the JAIN SIP stack. NIST SIP is
available for download here, and is bundled with the EarthLink
SIPshare distribution.

Additional SIPshare implementation details may be found here.

Common questions

   1. Will EarthLink SIPshare work behind NAT?

      No. All messaging, including the file transfer protocol,
are based on UDP. If you want to extend EarthLink SIPshare by
incorporating something like STUN for NAT traversal, by all means
do so.

   2. What are the licensing conditions of EarthLink SIPshare?

      EarthLink SIPshare is available free of charge and is
licensed under a BSD-style license. 

Future work, refinements, and extensions

EarthLink SIPshare is a prototype, a work in progress. It
implements only the subset of SIP messaging needed to demonstrate
this alternative use of SIP. Other features may be of interest to
the community, which may include

    * NAT traversal
    * Using standard tftp instead of FSP for content transfer
    * Improved user interface, including cancelling downloads
    * Providing for Notify body semantics larger than one UDP
datagram can accomodate

Files

SIPshare license: (http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/LICENSE)
Release history: (http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/RELEASES)
SIPshare README: (http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/README)
SIPshare build notes:
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/BUILD)
Additional screenshots:
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/screenshots.html)
Acknowledgments and credits:
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/ACKNOWLEDGMENTS)
References:
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/references.html)
SIPshare discussion board:
(http://www.research.earthlink.net/cgi-bin/ikonboard//forums.cgi?forum=6)
Download: (http://www.research.earthlink.net/p2p/p2p.zip)

Disclaimer

EarthLink believes everyone has a right to their property,
personal or otherwise, and this includes copyrights. We advocate
in no way file sharing outside the boundary of fair use.

EarthLink SIPshare is a prototype, meant to be extended by the
community or used casually for instructional and evaluation
purposes. It is alpha-quality code at best. The version you
download here almost certainly contains bugs. The software is
provided as-is, with no warranty expressed or implied, and should
not be used for critical applications.

Finally, EarthLink Research and Development will from time to
time release code, as with SIPshare, on a proof-of-concept basis.
We like to gauge what the community is interested in, to see what
ideas may find purchase in the greater Internet user base. The
idea with SIPshare is P2P over SIP, not file sharing for its own
sake.

As a result of all this, EarthLink SIPshare is NOT a supported
EarthLink product. It is more than anything else a manifestation
of an idea. So if you call our Tech Support with SIPshare
questions, they will have no idea what you are talking about.
Please, if you use SIPshare, you're on your own.

Last modified: Thu Sep 16 09:26:19 PDT 2004
Feedback: p2pOverSIP at research.earthlink.net
Copyright 2004, EarthLink, Inc.

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