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Nokia researchers have developed a new peer-to-peer (P2P) scheme tailored specifically for mobile phones. Still in a development and testing phase, the network differs from traditional Internet P2P services such as Gnutella or Kazaa in that they do not directly link all users on the network. Rather, users are grouped into "clusters", with each member of a given cluster having a complete index of the files being offered by all users in that cluster, a system known as "parallel index clustering". Any user can then serve responses on behalf of other members of the cluster, thus reducing complexity and bandwidth requirements on slower phone networks.
The current version of the P2P application works with pictures and text, ranging from camera phone shots to SMS and MMS messages. The researchers are planning to support compressed audio formats such as MP3 in the near future, however. The major challenge for the system now is not technological but legal, as the music and movie industries have been staunchly opposed to P2P applications on the Internet, and phone carriers generally prefer centralized services that they can control, and charge for, over allowing users to communicate with each other directly.
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