The article is divided into 8 sections: Introduction, What is P2P ?, The Role of P2P, Specialization on the Internet, Growth of the Global Community, The Application P2P, P2P - The Bottom Line, Overview of P2P Creation and Evolution.
In the Introduction the author compares P2P (Peer to Peer Networking) to previous hot topics such as B2B and B2C. He raises the issue of whether P2P will fade away as the others have or whether it will catch on in a big way.
In "What is P2P ?" the article goes on to define P2P as a means of direct communication between two machines, similar to instant messaging. The author makes the point that when a server serves up a web page, it goes through multiple point to point links to find the page in question and because of this similarity to P2P, the technology behind P2P could revolutionize the Internet.
In "The Role of P2P", two trends are identified which P2P is supposed to address: 1) the increasing diversity of the web and 2) the increasing volume of data being sent over the Internet.
In "Specialization on the Internet" the point is made that there have been several recent attempts to organize the content of the Internet. P2P can provide a means of clustering similar information into specialized categories.
In "Growth of the Global Community" the challenge of sorting through a very large amount of information very quickly is explained as a reason to use P2P.
In "The Application P2P" a list of potential P2P applications is proposed. Among them are: file-sharing services, coordinated content distributon in large organizations, anonymous sharing of content and specialized communities.
In "P2P - The Bottom Line" the pros and cons of P2P are listed.
In "Overview of P2P Creation and Evolution" the point is made that P2P has had a grass-roots origin similar to that of Linux. However for the technology to succeed it will depend on its widespread adoption by the business community.