PeerSpaces: Data-driven coordination in peer-to-peer networks

Shared dataspaces à la Linda, and the underlying data-driven coordination model, have been successfully exploited in the development of a huge variety of applications, going from parallel computing to web-based collaborative work. In this paper we consider a novel class of applications, namely those developed for peer-to-peer networks à la Gnutella or FreeNet. We discuss the problems which arise when trying to exploit the original Linda coordination model in this new scenario. In order to address these problems, we introduce PeerSpaces, a new coordination model particularly suited for the realm of peer-to-peer network applications, and we present a prototypical implementation of this coordination model based on the JXTA peer-to-peer technology.