Slashdot Mirror
Convergence of P2P and Grid Predicted
tom_conte writes "From the proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems (IPTPS'03), "On Death, Taxes, and the Convergence of Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing" compares the two current popular incarnations of distributed computing technology, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and Grid Computing. It also predicts the convergence of the two technologies: "The complementary nature of the strengths and weaknesses of the two approaches suggests that the interests of the two communities are likely to grow closer over time." This paper is worth reading if you want to clear up the marketing cloud that surrounds these two technologies and sometimes makes them hard to distinguish."
Sorry but P2P has inherit qualities that are just as important as copyright infringement: caching, load distribution etc.
mirror in case in of /.'ing:
http://100mbit.hexxxen.net/slashdot/death_taxes.pd f
Ever heard of KaZaA? Remember CloudLoad and AltNet? They are an alternative, commerical peer-to-peer network piggy-backing on FastTrack; serving paid content and crunching numbers. FT is currently the largest P2P network in existance, with over 5 million users, and their hashing/encryption algorithms for peer-to-peer authentication are secret (no one has yet to reverse Kazaa), so they can do anything they damn well please. Including merging P2P and "grid" computing. Which they have already done. (I'm waiting for PFT to come out and make grid computing optional.).
"The lesson to be learned is not to take the comments on slashdot too literally." --Vinnie Falco, BearShare
Actually, Foster cites himself so much because he's The Big Guy in grid computing. He's been in it since the early days, gets a huge chunk of the research funding, and is involved with lots of projects (both in terms of developing grid technology and implementing it in scientific communities).
When you're ahead of the crowd, you don't have many peers to cite.
Oh, and his reputation is actually pretty sound, he doesn't really need to rely on inflated citation counts, he has plenty of research dollars coming in -- that should keep his institutions (Argonne and U of Chicago) happy.
Posting anon because I'm involved in a grid project and want to speak *my* mind instead of having to act as a responsible member of the team.
The grid has been trying to gear up from academia/research for so long, I can't even remember when I first heard of it.
About eight years.
In the aftermath of the dot com crash, companies are falling over themselves trying to snag onto the "next big thing".
Please enumerate these companies. I'd love to consider them as possible customers. Currently grid computing is mostly met with, well deserved, skeptisism.
Now we have two different worlds colliding, with people pushing 'em that have been ignoring each other all this time.
Grossly unfair. At least from the grid side we've long considered p2p and there are even working groups discussing this intersection in GGF.
They can't make it easy for the average person to install and use.
Bullocks on two counts.
1) *average people* don't and shouldn't use gridware yet.
2) The dominent gridware is trivial to install compared to the problems it solves. It's like saying that you want to take a crack a proving an ancient theorem but you don't want to have to learn any math. TS.
They (the Grid folks in particular) seem to be missing this, big time. Globus is NOT easy to install.
Again, wrong on two counts.
1) Globus is not the grid. Globus is *a* project developing gridware.
2) Globus is fucking trivial to install (and I'm not on their staff). Maybe not as easy to install as kazaa, but then gridware is targetted at people who want to do more with the internet than look at pictures of Gillian Anderson's pussy. That said, review point one. There are other grids available.
Secondly, the world doesn't need yet another Corba-like thing to make everything interoperate with everything else with MORE glue on top of it.
Now there's an almost complete lack of content. Not a single grid development house is going in this direction. There is a *broad* consensus that using open communications protocols (i.e. web services) is the way to go instead of making something proprietary.
KQML should have taught people this lesson back when that was all the rage in agent systems.
Right, because agent systems and grid are *so* similar.
Come on now, KQML was a language for doing REST (to a first approximation) a grid is a far more complex concept.
If you want two systems to talk to each other, couple 'em in whatever language you want and stick to it.
Again, a complete and utter lack of understanding what the grid is about. Your comment amounts to having a cabal of grid programmers bless a particular language and then demand that everyone write to it. Dumb. Not that there aren't language bigots in the grid community that would do that if they could, but dumb nonetheless.
man, I wish these people would just sit back and take notice of the other distributed systems out there that are out there and working and solving problems without foisting yet another distributed computing paradigm (oh hell, I can't believe I used that word...forgive me), on the world.
I wish luddites would do a bit of reading and educate themselves before assuming that everything they didn't come up with is nonesense. Especially luddites who have *no* idea the depth of the library at my company.
The grid solves problems that exist and aren't being solved in other ways except through enormous investment by each and every company that wants to solve them for themselves.
Another analogy. Your comment is akin to demanding that instead of adopting Windows (which is a hassle to install, run and keep secure) that they instead write their own operating system tuned to their own needs. Sillyness.
Hugs and kisses from the future.
What it says, as far as I see it, in a nutshell:
- Grid computing and P2P have similar goals, and are each an attempt to address many of the same problems.
- The Grid and P2P approaches tackle these problems from different directions.
- Before either is completely successful, a system will probably emerge that incorporates elements of both.
So in that sense, yes, he's predicting some convergence. But on the other hand, what most of the paper seems to do is both compare and contrast the P2P and Grid approaches, so that people like you who say, "Wait a minute! This Grid stuff and this P2P stuff, it all sounds like the same thing!" can finally figure out what the differences are.In that sense, it seems like a really great paper, the kind of thing I've sought after for a while now. Nice one, Ian!
Breakfast served all day!
The difficulty with this is not doing it, it's doing it on top of Windows.
Breakfast served all day!
What Seti P2P system?
Seti is plain client server.
My seti client doesn't talk to your seti client. They both report back to a central server.
hey dumass, read up on your technologies. TPC/IP and firewire are totally different things. Why don't you go study some more before you clog up our boards with worthless crap, k?
Ah, the type of post I expect from an AC. However, for the benefit of others with at least half a brain here, check out this link to find out all about TCP/IP over Firewire. It's pretty impressive and provides a fast easy way to move lots of data in an easy to implement network combined with auto detection and configuration.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
hey dumass, read up on your technologies. TPC/IP and firewire are totally different things. Why don't you go study some more before you clog up our boards with worthless crap, k?
I should have remembered this for my immediately prior post, but actually, I wrote an article about the implications of distributed computing including a discussion about TCP/IP over Firewire back in December. You can read about it here
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
I'm involved with P2P research at my university. I think once people start the see the greater implications of the technology they won't be so quick to label it as a black/grey (this is a knee-jerk reaction from the music industry that may last yet for a few years).
P2P is a solution to massive content distribution; any kind of content. And there are different scales. P2P may show itself in many ways in the near future, whether you're chillin' to SomaFM, backing up your data to/from a redudant multipeer network, or maybe distributing large content from a web site and benefiting from clients' bandwidth for peer to peer redistribution.
I've read the law, and I don't see what you're saying. In fact, if I recall correctly, the amount of distrobution and the profit made both factor into punishment, but a zero revenue pirate is still guilty, and may be subject to criminal law.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin