In the office, where security is an even greater concern, the network is typically server-based. The servers contain both the files and the programs shared by the persons who log into the network. You can think of it as a hub and spoke model, with server being the hub and each user’s computer as a spoke.

The internet offers both types of networks, too. If you go to Citibank.com, you will access a server just like the hub and spoke model. But if you go to a site like BearShare.com or Kazaa.com, you will be connecting to a P2P network, along with tens of thousands of other computers.

And that’s where the problems begin…

The Solution
A peer to peer network is designed to support itself. Each participant, like a pallbearer, carries a small weight of the network, thus eliminating the need for a designated server.

The SETI Institute uses peer to peer networking and the distributed computing power of three million home computers to search for alien life. See http://setiathome.berkeley.edu/.

Skype also uses peer to peer networking for its internet phone network, drawing a little bit of horsepower from each member.

Peer to peer networking takes a step toward the dark side when it comes to file sharing sites. File sharing sites are giant potlucks, where everyone brings files (instead of food and drinks) to a particular site so those files can be shared and swapped for free.
(See www.FileSharingPlace.com and www.ZeroPaid.com for directories of file sharing sites.) As you can imagine, one can get all kinds of goodies at these filing sharing sites, including pirated movies and music.

One can also get lots of spyware and viruses. The bad guys typically pack all that juicy free stuff with various payloads, like scripts to send you customized ads and key stroke loggers to remotely monitor your typing. The old adage applies especially well to the internet: If it’s too good to be true…it probably isn’t good at all.

An even bigger danger when using file sharing sites is the constant risk of inadvertently sharing things you don’t want to share, like tax statements, loan applications and other very confidential files. File sharing software is designed to find what you’re looking for (on other people’s hard drives!) And the search software is very effective. Note: Just to give you an idea of how popular these sites are, file sharing sites see about 1 billion searches per day worldwide. Google sees significantly less: about 140 million per day worldwide.

My advice:

1. Stay away from file sharing sites.
2. Be careful who has physical and electronic access to your computer.
3. Refrain from doing company work on the home computer(s).
4. Refrain from doing personal activities on your work computers.
5. If you must use file sharing sites, access the sites from a stand-alone computer, which has nothing of value on its drives and is not networked to other computers
6. Always use the most recent versions of antivirus and antispyware software, use a firewall and be sure to get all the latest updates for your operating system.

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