Alan Davoust

A Distributed Wiki System Based on Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Principles

In peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing networks, each peer maintains its own repository, publishing files, downloading files from others, and making its own files available for download. We present P2Pedia, a distributed wiki system applying these principles to collaborative editing of documents: contributors may maintain their own version of each document, while accessing and reusing the contributions of others. This collaboration model, by allowing for multiple versions of a document, generates a different type of versioning hierarchy, and changes the semantics of wikilinks. We show how the versioning hierarchy of documents and the wikilinks create a graph of documents, that can be searched using an existing file-sharing infrastructure, and we propose some trust indicators to help users choose between available search results. Finally, we present the design and implementation of P2Pedia, and propose some scenarios where our proposed collaboration model is most appropriate.

Distributed wikis: a survey

‘Distributed wiki’ is a generic term covering various systems, including ‘peer‐to‐peer wiki’, ‘mobile wiki’, ‘offline wiki’, ‘federated wiki’ and others. Distributed wikis distribute their pages among the sites of autonomous participants to address various motivations, including high availability of data, new collaboration models and different viewpoints of subjects. Although existing systems share some common basic concepts, it is often difficult to understand the specificity of each one, the underlying complexities or the best context in which to use it. In this paper, we define, classify and characterize distributed wikis. We identify three classes of distributed wiki systems, each using a different collaboration model and distribution scheme for its pages: highly available wikis, decentralized social wikis and federated wikis. We classify existing distributed wikis according to these classes. We detail their underlying complexities and social and technical motivations. We also highlight some directions for research and opportunities for new systems with original social and technical motivations. Copyright

P2Pedia: a peer-to-peer wiki for decentralized collaboration

Existing Wiki systems such as Wikipedia depend on a centralized authority and cannot easily accommodate multiple points of view. We present P2Pedia, a social peer‐to‐peer wiki system, where users have their own local repository and can collaborate by creating, discovering, editing, and sharing pages with their peers but without synchronizing them. Multiple versions of each page can thus co‐exist on each repository and across the network, which allows for multiple points of view.

Decentralized collaboration with a peer-to-peer wiki

We report our experience using a peer-to-peer (P2P) wiki system for academic writing tutorials. Our wiki system supports a non-traditional collaboration model, where each participant maintains their own version of the documents.

Towards Semantically Enhanced Peer-to-Peer File-Sharing

We characterize publication and retrieval of documents in peer-to-peer file-sharing systems and contrast them with query answering in peer-to-peer database systems. We show that the simplicity of file-sharing systems avoids many problems faced by P2P database systems. We propose a simple and open meta-model for documents and meta-data, for the purpose of expressing arbitrary relations between documents, peers, and file-sharing communities. Such relations in effect define a semantic enhancement to P2P file-sharing systems and enable the distributed emergence of knowledge. We illustrate our study with the description of our system, which distributes queries only to relevant peers, and can translate queries across different meta-data schemas.

Processing Regular Path Queries on Arbitrarily Distributed Data

Regular Path Queries (RPQs) are a type of graph query where answers are pairs of nodes connected by a sequence of edges matching a regular expression.

DEVS simulation of peer-to-peer file-sharing

We present a framework to simulate a peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing network, based on the Discrete Event Systems Specification (DEVS) formalism. Our framework models a file-sharing network as a coupled model, comprising a network model and a large number of peer models. While most available network simulation tools focus on transportlevel dynamics, we provide extensible and reusable models for the file-sharing protocol and for the behavior of peers. These models, implemented using the CD++ toolkit, can readily be used on existing simulators, including parallel and real-time simulators. As a case study, we apply our framework to simulate a P2P web, and show the emergence of an interesting page distribution.

Towards Securing Peer-to-Peer SIP in the MANET Context: Existing Work and Perspectives

The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is a key building block of many social applications, including VoIP communication and instant messaging. In its original architecture, SIP heavily relies on servers such as proxies and registrars. Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are networks comprised of mobile devices that communicate over wireless links, such as tactical radio networks or vehicular networks. In such networks, no fixed infrastructure exists and server-based solutions need to be redesigned to work in a peer-to-peer fashion. We survey existing proposals for the implementation of SIP over such MANETs and analyze their security issues. We then discuss potential solutions and their suitability in the MANET context.

Distributed Wikis and Social Networks: A Good Fit

Social networks can play an important role in the process of decentralizing authority in distributed systems. We will focus on distributed wiki systems, and we show how, in the special case of a peer-to-peer wiki, there is a rational incentive for users to self-organize and form a meaningful social network. We discuss to that effect the basic metrics that can be derived from the topology of the social network to help assess the subjective quality of wiki entries. Demos and experimental results will illustrate and support our discussion. We finally speculate as to how these results may also translate to discussion forums or recommender systems.

Collaborative Building, Sharing and Handling of Graphs of Documents Using P2P File-Sharing

We are interested in creating a peer-to-peer infrastructure for the collaborative creation of knowledge, with no centralized point of control. We show how documents in a P2P file-sharing network can be interlinked, using a naming scheme based on the document schema and content, rather than on the document location. The interlinked documents can be seen as a distributed graph of documents, for which we define a class of graph queries supported by our file-sharing system.