Operating Systems: Microsoft Adopts Peer-to-peer

Zhang Zheng, head of project in the Media Management Group

Even though he didn't give us a demonstration, the meeting with Zhang Zheng proved to be particularly interesting. This researcher is working on improvements to the very heart of Microsoft's operating systems and to Windows in particular. He talked to us about concepts such as the "Data Retaining Platform," an automatic data-sharing system for a network consisting of several PCs.

To summarize, large data files will be split into several sections that will be stored on different PCs, depending on the amount of hard disk space available and the availability rate of the computers on the network. Security will be handled by data duplication at the various workstations.

To organize the system so that it's transparent for the users, the technology used will be none other than peer-to-peer! That's right, the same technology that is used for MP3 file exchange systems and for Skype IP telephony software. This isn't a sort of trial run to see if it works. Zheng confirmed that " peer-to-peer is going to be a 'core technology' for Longhorn and future versions of Windows" . Microsoft has always been known to be good at taking advantage of situations and it has proved this once again by adopting a technology that has been tried and found to be reliable.