How to Get Volunteers for Web-based Computing

Authors

Abstract

Web-based parallel computing is a promising idea provided there are a considerable number of Internet users that would volunteer their CPU cycles for a global computation. The execution time of Web-based parallel applications is thus unpredictable and quite dependent of the good willing of other users. We have developed a project, called JET, and we found this is an important problem that needs to be solved. Some features should then be provided by the system to seize and maintain the enthusiasm of users that contribute the CPU idle cycles of their machines. A possible solution is to provide a Web-page with statistics about the
contribution time and computational power offered by each individual user or institution.
In this paper, we present the design of JET-STATS, a server of statistics that was developed in our project. The server was implemented inside a HTTP daemon and several optimization techniques have been used for the sake of efficiency. It provides the statistical information in a Web page that provides a flexible and fancy interface. This server was implemented in a modular way and it can be easily adapted to any other system that uses the idea of Web-based parallel computing.

Subject

Parallel and Distributed Computing

Conference

DCW'98, Workshop on Distributed Computing on the Web, June 1998