From P2P to Web services and Grids is a new book that provides an overview of the foundations for next-generation Internet applications. It outlines both the theory and practice of current technologies using easy-to-understand terminology and graphical illustrations to simplfy the often difficult-to-grasp technologies. The book was written for students or professionals wishing to become familiar with distributed technologies quickly and easily and therefore it should appeal to a wide variety of individuals.

The book therefore draws from real application examples, ranging from grass roots Internet culture file-sharing applications, such as Napster, Gnutella and Freenet to high-performance applications, which use Grid technology to transfer Terabytes of information between cites worldwide. It also describes in details the middleware and service-oriented technologies used (e.g. Globus, Web services, Grid services, Jxta and Jini) and provides discussions of their deployment, simularities and differences.

The subtitle of the book, "Peers in a Client/Server World", acknowledges the transition from the current client/server based Internet to exciting applications that use these new technologies. I really hope you enjoy reading the book as much as I did writing it.

...and thanks to Tram Tran (tram@cct.lsu.edu) for creating this Web site.