Peer-to-Peer Computing for Secure High Performance Data Copying

Overview

The BaBar Copy Program (bbcp) is an excellent representative of peer-to-peer (P2P) computing. It is also a pioneering application of its type in the P2P arena. Built upon the foundation of its predecessor, Secure Fast Copy (sfcp), bbcp incorporates significant improvements performance and usability. As with sfcp, bbcp uses ssh for authentication; providing an elegant and simple working model - if one can ssh to a location, he or she can copy files to or from that location. To fully support this notion, bbcp transparently supports 3rd party copy operations. The program also incorporates several mechanism to deal with firewall security; the bane of P2P computing.