Avoiding the Kerika Servers

Let's consider what happens when you update a document that you are sharing with several buddies. If some of your buddies are currently online, your computer will start to immediately send them the updated document. This communications takes place directly from your computer to theirs (that's the beauty of peer-to-peer networking).

But what happens if some of your buddies are not around to get their updates?

In that case, your computer will automatically forward the document to a "storage server" at Kerika's data center, where it will sit and wait for your absent buddies to show up. And when these folks do show up, they get their missing updates from the storage server. And once every last one of your buddies has gotten his or her updated copy of your document, the storage server will automatically discard its copy.

We call this "server-assisted peer-to-peer networking" -- it combines the store-and-forward model of email with the immediacy of instant messaging, and it's a popular feature for most users. Some folks, however, may not want their documents to ever come through our storage server -- for greater privacy.

That's easy to set up: just go the File menu in Kerika, select the Send Documents option, and turn off "Automatically send documents." From now on, your documents never get sent to anyone until you manually push them out. When you see that all your buddies are online, you can push out your document updates -- all at once, or one by one.