Our technology

The digitalexandria toolset is built upon peer to peer technology. In a p2p network all nodes use a fraction of their resources for the benefit of everyone, including themselves.

This approach is only fitting, given our focus on collaboration. Our servers work as the pivot of this system connecting the nodes, collecting and distributing needed data among them.

Compared to a system with a central server the advantages of peer-to-peer include the capacity of the archives, the speed of updating (the time between the preparation of a document and it being published on the network), the stream of updates (the number of new documents which can be made available over time), the stream of access (the number of users who can use the service at the same time) and the simplicity and speed with which a document can be shared:

• Substantially faster and simpler to use, particularly as there is no need to upload documents, a process which is inevitable with a centralized system.
• Unlimited capacity of the archive.
  Each document has space in the computer in which it was born, and for being in that computer it has a space in the network.
• Unlimited update speed.
  A document can be made available even while it is being produced, removing the time needed between its creation and the time it can be shared (indeed this becomes a negative measurement of time).
• Unlimited update flow.
  There is no limit to the number of people who can share documents at any one time. To understand the importance of this fact, we must consider that the number of new scientific documents produced annually (based on a very cautious estimate of one document per researcher) is around 5-10 million.
• Access flow practically unlimited.
  While there is a theoretical limit to the number of people accessing the research-download service at the same time, this limit is based on the internet network as a whole, when considered in the context of a scalable peer-to-peer system, this stream can be considered to be unlimited.