distributed systems

Goal

There are many different types of distributed computing systems and many challenges to overcome in successfully architecting one. The main goal of a distributed computing system is to connect users and resources in a transparent, open, and scalable way. Ideally this arrangement is drastically more fault tolerant and more powerful than many combinations of stand-alone computer systems.

Examples

An example of a distributed system is the World Wide Web. As you are reading a web page, you are actually using the distributed system that comprises the site. As you are browsing the web, your web browser running on your own computer communicates with different web servers that provide web pages. Possibly, your browser uses a proxy server to access the web contents stored on web servers faster and more securely. To find these servers, it also uses the distributed domain name system. Your web browser communicates with all of these servers over the Internet, via a system of routers which are themselves part of a large distributed routing system.

Openness

Openness is the property of distributed systems that measures the extent to which it offers a standardized interface that allows it to be extended and scaled. It is clear that a system that easily allows more computing entities to be plugged into it and more features to be easily added to it has an advantage over a perfectly closed and self-contained system.

Implications for anarchism

The openness and fault tolerance of distributed systems allows the decentralization of computer systems, which, in line with anarchist theory prevents coercion by those with access to the hardware and software of a system.

Distributed systems can be built that achieve such ends as secure voting, the publishing of information that cannot be erased and the lack of any single point of failure.

For instance, any anarchist software system (like Anarchopedia) can be taken down by authorities simply by attacking its single weakest point - the server upon which it runs. Distributed systems can utilize the power of the Internet, which was conceived to be operational in the event of a nuclear attack, to allow any software systems to remain operational in the event of the compromise of servers by the authorities.

See also

• Primer on distributed systems
• Wikipedia on distributed systems (parts of this page were sourced from this)

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