Distributed computing environment in the ESnet Community
Roy Whitney · University of North Texas Digital Library (University of North Texas) · 1995
The Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Community is undertaking an ambitious project to coordinate its distributed computing. A reasonable question is: ''Why Coordinate Distributed Computing?'' Without a coordinating element, the number of links for communicating between a number of nodes would grow with order N {sup 2}. Inserting an effective coordinating principle can reduce the number of independently managed links to order N while still leaving all of the links available for actual communications. A good example from telecommunications is the public phone system where one relies on central coordination of the phone numbers rather than having to personally negotiate the switching information with everyone with whom one wishes to communicate. The Internet's distributed system of name servers is another good example. The meta-question to the first question is: ''Why use distributed computing?'' The answer can be put in three parts: Individual end users require access to far more information and computational resources than they can acquire locally. For some applications, distributed computers are nearly as efficient as centralized computers and the total CPU resources available may be significant. Many resources are unique. They cannot easily be replicated. Some examples in the DOE community include research accelerators, fusion facilities, systems of virtual caves, and environmental laboratories. The overall response to the questions can be summarized in the concept of virtual laboratories. Humans want their resources responding within a second and at arm's length or closer. Using coordinated distributed computing, these requirements can be met by placing facilities on-line via Internet style technologies. Further, human communication is 10% verbal, 40% audio and 50% physiological. Using combinations of words, sounds and pictures including animation, virtual laboratory technologies can exploit all of these aspects of human communication. The human end user receives the benefit of virtual presence at on-line facilities and makes use of a rich collection of resources.