What's interesting about mermaid is that it's the first IPv6 P2P sharing application that I'm aware of that makes extensive use of the new IPv6 address scheme, which helps get around pesky NAT issues and share data/media with your other peers.
Mermaid can also be used for P2P VoIP that doesn't require centralized supernodes like Skype does. In addition to VoIP you can also broadcast your webcam, and your voice live, to millions of people worldwide in real-time over your own private, secure, P2P network, optimized for webcam and voice broadcast.
What else can you you do with mermaid? They claim the following capabilities:
- The ability to broadcast MOVIES in realtime to millions of people worldwide over a private, secure, server-less P2P network.
- The ability to broadcast and receive NEWS, over a server-less, P2P network spanning the globe, where you can get the news, as soon as it gets published.
- The ability to broadcast ANY audio/video source connected to your computer over your own private, secure, P2P network to millions of people around the globe.
- Multiple people connected to each other, sharing their webcams, their desktops, their voice and files (file sharing) over their very own private P2P network, bringing global, and scalable multi-node video conferencing to mainstream.
How does it work? Well according to their website, the Mermaid products are pure peer-to-peer, and do not require any major infrastructure to scale to millions of people. "What that means, is that you can create your own network, which will be identified with your network-id and password, and over that network, you can broadcast movies, webcam feeds, audio feeds, news, files to all the people connected to your network. What's more, is that you can put your own ads to be shown on your network(s)."
They go on to explain that the more people on your network, the better. In fact, they explain, "No, you won’t need a heavy-tank computer or a gazzilion-terabytes/second network to stream to millions of people. The collective power of all the computers connected to your network will be harnessed. You can easily make do with an average PC and an average network."
Cool!
One one caveat - you need IPv6, as they explain here:
The software works like a charm on office LANs, and campus and other networks. But you want your network to be globally available right? Good, so you need to get IPv6. Call your ISP, and say you need ‘a globally routable I-P-V-6 address’. If they don’t, tell them you’re switching ISP coz they’re so lazy that they can’t click a button on their screens.
That’s pretty much it…
Yeah, cuz IPv6 is being deployed like gangbusters - NOT! I know, they keep saying this is the year of IPv6, but I'm still waiting... Still, once IPv6 does take off, interesting apps like this P2P IPv6 app will certainly take off. No doubt Bittorrent and other popular P2P sharing apps will get on board the IPv6 wagon . Due to the server-less infrastructure, it will be even more impossible to shut down pirated media since there are no centralized torrent trackers. Take that RIAA and MPAA
The software is FREE, but it is advertising supported - apparently to support their beer drinking habits.]]>