Sun sees Jxta gathering steam

IDG News Service - Sun Microsystems Inc. says its Jxta technology for peer-to-peer computing is gathering steam and may soon make its way into some of its own products.

The number of developers who have downloaded the free Jxta code from the Web passed 2 million recently, up from about a million last March, said Juan Carlos Soto, director for advanced technologies at Sun. The number of developers who have registered at Jxta.org is much lower, however, at about 16,200, up from 12,000 a year ago.

"There's a lot of interest in Jxta out there and a lot of developers are working with the technology," Soto said.

A key goal at Sun has been to make Jxta better suited for use in commercial applications. In December it released version 2.2 of the Java 2, Standard Edition (J2SE) implementation of Jxta, an upgrade which focused on improving security and performance. A further release, with the code-name Churrasco, is due in March.

Unveiled almost three years ago by Sun's then chief scientist, Bill Joy, Jxta provides a communications mechanism for linking peers -- such as a PC, server, phone or PDA -- in a distributed network. Such peer-to-peer networks typically aren't run by a central server, and Jxta provides a way for the peers to locate and communicate with each other directly.

It is offered under an open source license, which means developers can tinker with the code. It is also free, making it attractive to some. But the fact that it is free has also been a source of criticism. Some analysts have wondered what Sun gets in return for its investment in developing Jxta, and why it hasn't made use of the technology itself.

That may be about to change. Jxta is mature enough that Sun will soon be using it in some of its own desktop and server products, Soto said. "What you are going to see is more and more Sun products start to include the Jxta technology in them," he said.

Sun has already shown how Jxta could work as part of its N1 system for managing data centers. Installed on a group of servers, the technology can be used to indicate when servers go on and off-line, and help to allocate computing jobs accordingly, Soto said.

Jxta may also find its way into Sun's Java Enterprise System, a bundle of server software formerly called Sun ONE. For example, it could be used to improve the performance and scalability of the instant messaging component, in part because Jxta is unhindered by