Distributed computing

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Distributed system, distributed computing
 Early computing was performed on a single
processor. Uni-processor computing can be
called centralized computing.
 A distributed system is a collection of
independent computers, interconnected via a
network, capable of collaborating on a task.
 Distributed computing is computing
performed in a distributed system.

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Distributed Systems

w ork
s tatio n s a lo c al n etw o rk

T h e I n tern et

a n etw o r k h o s t

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Examples of Distributed systems
 Network of workstations (NOW): a group of
networked personal workstations connected to
one or more server machines.
 The Internet
 An intranet: a network of computers and
workstations within an organization,
segregated from the Internet via a protective
device (a firewall).

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Example of a large-scale distributed system
– eBay (Source: Los Angeles Times.)

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An example small-scale distributed system
(Source: Los Angeles Times.)

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Computers in a Distributed System
 Workstations: computers used by end-users to
perform computing
 Server machines: computers which provide
resources and services
 Personal Assistance Devices: handheld
computers connected to the system via a
wireless communication link.

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The power of the Internet
(Source: the Usability Professional Association’s site.)

 60 million American households use computers.(The

New York Times, 5/28/98)
 The number of computer users in the workplace has
increased from 600,000 in 1976 to 80 million today.
(San Francisco Examiner, 3/29/98)
 84% of Internet users say that the Web is
indispensable. Nearly the same percentage find e-
mail indispensable. 85% use the Internet every day.
(GVU, 1997)

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The Power of the Internet – 2
(Source: [Link])

 BACKBONE CAPACITY: The capacity of the Internet

backbone to carry information is doubling every 100 days. (
U.S. Internet Council, Apr. 1999).
 DATA TRAFFIC SURPASSING VOICE: Voice traffic is
growing at 10% per year or less, while data traffic is
conservatively estimated to be growing at 125% per year,
meaning voice will be less than 1% of the total traffic by
2007. (Technology Futures, Inc March 2000).
 DOMAIN NAMES: There are 12,844,877 unique domain
names (e.g. [Link]) registered worldwide, with 428,023
new domain names registered each week. (
NetNames Statistics 12/28/1999).
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The Power of the Internet – 3
(Source: [Link])

 DOMAIN NAMES: There are 12,844,877 unique domain

names (e.g. [Link]) registered worldwide, with 428,023
new domain names registered each week. (
NetNames Statistics 12/28/1999).
 HOST COMPUTERS: In July 1999 there were 56.2 million
"host" computers supporting web pages. In July 1997 there
were 19.5 million host computers, with 3.2 million hosts in
July 1994, and a mere 80,000 in July 1989. (
Internet Software Consortium – Internet Domain Survey).
 TOTAL AMOUNT OF DATA: 1,570,000,000 pages,
29,400,000,000,000 bytes of text, 353,000,000 images, and
5,880,000,000,000 bytes of image data. (
The Censorware Project, Jan. 26, 1999).
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The Power of the Internet – 4
(Source: [Link])

 EMAIL VOLUME: Average U.S. consumer will receive

1,600 commercial email messages in 2005, up from 40 in
1999, while non-marketing and personal correspondence will
more than double from approximately 1,750 emails per year
in 1999 to almost 4,000 in 2005 (Jupiter Communications,
May 2000).
 159 million computers in the U.S., 135 million in EU, and
116 million in Asia Pacific (as of April 2000).
 WEB HITS/DAY: U.S. web pages averaged one billion hits
per day (aggregate) in October 1999. (eMarketer/Media
Metrix, Nov. 1999).

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NUMBER OF AMERICANS ONLINE –
HISTORICAL
(Source: [Link])

 1993 – 90,000 (U.S. Internet Council, Apr. 1999).

 1997 – 19 million (Stratis Group, Apr. 1999).
 1998 – 68 million in 1998. (Strategis Group, Nov. 1999).
 1998 – 84 million from home or work (Stratis Group, Apr.
1999).
 1998 – 37 million DAILY (Stratis Group, Apr. 1999).
 1999, Nov. – 118.4 million (Cyberatlas/Nielsen Net Ratings,
Dec. 1999).
 1999, Nov. – 74 million actually went online (
Cyberatlas/Nielsen Net Ratings, Dec. 1999).

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PERCENTAGE OF AMERICANS ONLINE
(Source: [Link])

 1998 – 28% (IDC, Oct. 1999).

 1998 – 42% of the U.S. adult population.
(Stratis Group, Apr. 1999)
 2003 – 62% (IDC, Oct. 1999).
 2003 – 67% (Yankee Group, 1999).
 2005 – 91% (Strategy Analytics, Dec. 1999).

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The Power of the Internet – 5
(Source: [Link])

 NEW USERS Q1 2000: More than 5 million

Americans joined the online world in the first quarter
of 2000, which averages to roughly 55,000 new
users each day, 2,289 new users each hour, or 38
new users each minute. (CyberAtlas /
Telecommunications Reports International, May
2000).
 US INTERNET USAGE: Average US Internet user
went online 18 sessions, spent a total of 9 hours, 5
minutes and 24 seconds online and visited 10 unique
sites
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per month. (Nielsen NetRatings, June 2000). 14
The Power of the Internet – 6
(Source: [Link])

 E-MAIL 1998: The U.S. Postal Service delivered 101 billion

pieces of paper mail in 1998. Estimates for e-mail messages
sent in 1998 range from 618 billion to 4 trillion. (U.S.
Internet Council, Apr. 1999).
 E-MAIL 1999: There are 270 million e-mailboxes in the U.S.
-- roughly 2.5 per user. (eMarketer/ Messaging Online, Nov.
1999).
 HOURS ONLINE (Veronis, Suhler & Associates, Nov.
1999):
1997 – 28 hours per capita
1998 – 74 hours per capita
2003 – 192 hours per capita
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ONLINE WORLDWIDE
(Source: [Link])

 1998 – 95.43 million people. (eMarketer eStats

1999).
 1998, Dec. – 144 million (IDC, Dec. 1999).
 1999, Dec. – 240 million (IDC, Dec. 1999).
 2002 – over 490 million (Computer Industry
Almanac, Nov. 1999).
 2005 – over 765 million (Computer Industry
Almanac, Nov. 1999
 U.S. -- 136 million (36% of world’s total)
(eMarketer, May 2000) – followed by Japan (27 M),
UK (18M), and China (16 M).
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Wireless access to the Internet
(Source: [Link])

 U.S. WIRELESS USERS: 61.5 million Americans will be

using wireless devices to access the Internet in 2003, up from
7.4 million in the US today (728% increase). (IDC Research,
Feb. 2000).
 MOBILE DATA: Almost 80% of the US Internet population
will access data from mobile phones in a year’s time, up from
the current figure of 3%. (Corechange, Inc & Cap Gemini
USA, Apr. 2000).

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“The network really is the computer.”
Tim O’Reilly, in an address at 6/2000 Java One:
“By now, it's a truism that the Internet runs on open source. Bind, the
Berkeley Internet Name Daemon, is the single most mission critical
program on the Internet, followed closely by Sendmail and Apache, open
source servers for two of the Internet's most widely used application
protocols, SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol ) and HTTP
(HyperText Transfer Protocol ).”
Early “killer apps”:
- usenet: distributed bulletin board
- email
- talk
Recent “killer apps”:
- the web
- Peer-to-Peer (e.g., Napster, Gnutella, KaZaA)
- collaborative computing (e.g., Java Shared Data Toolkit)

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Centralized vs. Distributed Computing

term in al
m ain fram e c o m p u ter
w o rk s tation

n etw ork lin k

n etw o rk h o s t
ce n tra lize d com pu tin g
dis tribu te d com pu tin g

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Monolithic mainframe applications vs. distributed
applications
based on [Link]

 The monolithic mainframe application architecture:

 Separate, single-function applications, such as order-entry or billing
 Applications cannot share data or other resources
 Developers must create multiple instances of the same functionality
(service).
 Proprietary (user) interfaces
 The distributed application architecture:
 Integrated applications
 Applications can share resources
 A single instance of functionality (service) can be reused.
 Common user interfaces

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Evolution of paradigms
 Client-server: Socket API, RMI (remote method invocation)
 Distributed objects
 Object broker: CORBA
 Network service: Jini
 Object space: JavaSpaces
 Mobile agents
 Message oriented middleware (MOM): Java Message Service
 Collaborative applications

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Cooperative distributed computing projects
Cooperative distributed computing projects
(also called distributed computing in some
literature): these are projects that parcel out
large-scale computing to workstations, often
making use of surplus CPU cycles. Example:
seti@home: project to scan data retrieved by a
radio telescope to search for radio signals
from another world.

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Why distributed computing?
 Economics: distributed systems allow the
pooling of resources, including CPU cycles,
data storage, input/output devices, and
services.
 Reliability: a distributed system allow
replication of resources and/or services, thus
reducing service outage due to failures.
 The Internet has become a universal platform
for distributed computing.
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The Weaknesses and Strengths of
Distributed Computing
In any form of computing, there is always a
tradeoff in advantages and disadvantages
Some of the reasons for the popularity of
distributed computing :
 The affordability of computers and
availability of network access
 Resource sharing
 Scalability
 Fault Tolerance
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The Weaknesses and Strengths of
Distributed Computing
The disadvantages of distributed computing:
 Multiple Points of Failures: the failure of
one or more participating computers, or one
or more network links, can spell trouble.
 Security Concerns: In a distributed system,
there are more opportunities for unauthorized
attack.

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 Summary - 1
We discussed the following topics:
 What is meant by distributed computing
 Distributed system
 Distributed computing vs. parallel computing
 Basic concepts in operating system: processes
and threads

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Summary - 2
 Basic concepts in data communication:
 Network architectures: the OSI model and the
Internet model
 Connection-oriented communication vs.
connectionless communication
 Naming schemes for network resources
• The Domain Name System (DNS)
• Protocol port numbers
• Uniform Resource Identifier (URI)
• Email addresses
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Summary-3
 Basic concepts in software engineering:
 Procedural programming vs. object-oriented
programming
 UML Class diagrams

 The three-layered architecture of distributed

applications: presentation layer, application or
business logic, the service layer
 The terms toolkit, framework, and component

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