P2P’s inherent lack of security and privacy looms as the technology’s biggest pitfall, says Neil Ward-Dutton, a principal consultant at Ovum, a London-based technology research company. "The idea of running others’ work through your PC, and vice versa, may not be welcome in a business environment," he says. Ward-Dutton is also concerned that the wide-open P2P architecture could prove to be a ripe breeding ground for viruses. "You can restrict the system so that you can only read files and not write to anything, but then you restrict much of P2P’s advantage," he says.

System administration can also be a nightmare, says Maclachlan. "As an administrator, how can you keep track of versions and authorization levels if everybody is accessing different versions from other network users?" There’s also the problem of users distributing unlicensed or illegal content (child pornography, for example). "Monitoring this activity is virtually impossible, and its existence could leave organizations open to lawsuits and legal charges," says Maclachlan.

P2P vendors are aware of the issues, and many are working to create solutions. Groove Networks, for instance, let organizations create virtual workgroups that are safeguarded by a combination of password-based access control and encryption technology.

But some P2P advocates tend to brush aside these concerns. "There’s nothing wrong with P2P that can’t be fixed or worked around," says Kelly Truelove, CEO of Clip2, a Palo Alto, Calif., consulting and software company that works with P2P developers. Truelove is confident that the built-in trust of P2P users (everyone pursing a common goal) and basic security precautions (such as requiring each user to run an antivirus program) will take care of most P2P headaches. He also believes that some of P2P’s perceived problems simply aren’t based on fact. "Despite the virus concerns, I have yet to read about any widespread virus outbreaks among the millions of Napster users," he says. But Kelly qualifies his comments by noting that most P2P file sharing apps, including Napster and Gnutella, have been used mostly for media files, such as video and audio?and such formats are poor carriers of viruses. He cautions that widespread sharing of programs and scripts could present a different story?and a different set of problems.

As P2P picks up steam, its proponents feel that it’s only a matter of time before the technology does become widespread. In addition to the creation of affinity communities and distributed computing environments, P2P is also being touted for the online marketing of music, software and other products and services?a "peer-tailing" approach under which customers distribute products and services?as well as for the rapid distribution of virus antidotes and software upgrades across corporate networks. MyCIO.com, the Internet security subsidiary of Network Associates, already offers a P2P antivirus distribution technology with its VirusScan ASaP service. "We’re seeing the dawn of a new networking era," says Truelove. "There’s certainly plenty of hype surrounding P2P, but the hype is not entirely unjustified."