My, my, JXTA is five. That means all that P2P-is-the-future hype is five years old too. It's gone quiet since then, though Vista (build 5636 out today!) has some local subnet chat I see, and Office 2007 includes Groove.

Now that everyone has forgotten about P2P, it's time to remember that it has uses. One of the nice things is that by decoupling destinations from hostnames, and using relay sites outside the firewall, JXTA, Jabber, etc, can all do two-way comms despite the presence of firewalls.

JXTA even has bindings for other languages (python, ruby), other platforms (.net), and mobile Java. So its very interesting. I just have to insert my usualy complaint about J2SE not being at all laptop-aware, which means not actually suited for running on the next set of corporate and home user client machines. Maybe once Apple buy Sun things will change there :)