By Deborah Ingram
Penn State has launched an open source Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology designed to foster academic and scientific collaboration through its ability to quickly and securely exchange files of all types and sizes between researchers and educators.
LionShare is a new technology designed to promote responsible academic and research-oriented file sharing on a secure and private P2P network. Developers released the 1.0 version at the Internet2 Member meeting September 20, 2005 in Philadelphia. LionShare 1.0 is the culmination of two years of Mellon-funded research and development by Penn State, Internet2 and Simon Fraser University in Canada.
LionShare technology will allow universities worldwide to collaborate directly through an authenticated P2P network by sharing files for academic and scientific purposes, according to Michael Halm, LionShare project director at Penn State.
"Our desire is to securely connect faculty, researchers and students to each other through a closed network that will allow sharing of photos, research, class materials, personal collections and other types of materials that typically aren't accessible using current technology," Halm said. "LionShare's P2P technology also optimizes bandwidth consumption which makes it ideal for sharing extremely large files," he added. "Faculty from many different disciplines, such as oceanography, meteorology, agriculture, arts and architecture, as well as other areas, can send large files such as motion video, data and images to their peers in a matter of minutes."
During the summer and fall semesters, Penn State students from several sections of English 202C, an upper-level, technical-writing course, have been testing and evaluating the software in classroom usability studies for undergraduate populations. Results from the classroom studies will not be available until the end of the semester, but Abram Anders, a Sparks Fellow and instructor of English 202C who is now very familiar with LionShare software, finds the restricted access and authentication features extremely useful for faculty. "With LionShare you can choose, down to the individual, who can and cannot access your material," he said. "The authentication and authorization processes built into LionShare, which other typical P2P technology do not provide, allow individuals on the network to control access to their files in addition to promoting responsible sharing by network users."
In addition, faculty and students can benefit from the software's organizational tools including automatic "metadata" features that assist in storing and quick retrieval of file contents, and other LionShare capabilities that allow users to search multiple external academic databases such as Open Knowledge Initiative and EduSource Communications Layers repositories. LionShare technology also has implemented secure collaboration (IM/Chat) based on an individual's digital identity.