🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Oct5.173444.24966@meaddata.com>, srivasm@meaddata.com (M. C. Srivas) writes:
|> In article <DWF.92Oct5092154@hope.acl.lanl.gov>, dwf@acl.lanl.gov (David W. Forslund) writes:
|> |> workstation world for 5-10 years.  I believe the workstation world now
|> |> is moving more to peer-peer computing in a truly distributed manner.
|> |> Client/server has difficulty scaling to large numbers of systems and
|> |> is most appropriate for systems in which the server is much more
|> |> powerful than the client.
|> |> 
|> |> --
|> |> David Forslund
|> 
|> If I take a look at OSF's DCE, or Sun's DOE and DOMF, it seems to me
|> that the world is indeed going to a client-server paradigm, away from
|> peer-peer. These client-server systems are supposed to scale to many
|> millions of machines and many millions of users. What do you have in
|> mind when you say:
|> 
|> 	"I believe the workstation world now is moving more to
|> 	peer-peer computing in a truly distributed manner."
|> 
|> I find that very hard to believe.
|> 
|> -Srivas.
|> 

The way I perceive the issue of "C/S vs. P2P" in today's distributed
computing paradigm is as following :

When it comes to the *TRANSPORT* level, P2P is the way the _network_ 
architecture should go. P2P is the essence of Distributed Computing in that 
it enables all nodes on the network to be equivalent to simplify network 
protocol, and to be expandable in its intelligence to manage the network 
resources. One evidence that supports this vision is IBM's extending (or shall 
we say _sustaining_ ?) LU6.2/PU2.1 (which is the only animal that has P2P 
behavior in the old SNA zoo) as the corner stone of its APPN, which is the network
fundation of its new SAA.

The C/S model, on the other hand, will still be the major computing paradigm 
on the *APPLICATION* level. For an application designer, C/S is intuitive
and actually models the real world more closely in a lot of cases.

There's nothing wrong with a C/S *application* built on a P2P *network*; 
Actually, that's probably going to be more and more usual a model you'll
see in the next couple of years. 

However, I do maintain that there is NOTHING wrong with a P2P
application built on a P2P network either.

Hope my thought doesn't SCARE too many people.


-- 
***********   Denys Jyh-Hwa Chen      dchen@ctp.com    1-617-374-8271   ***********
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