A distributed system is defined in the book as "...a collection of independent computers that appears to the user as a single coherent system." This makes me wonder if a system that allows the user to pick from which server to run, such as a video game, is considered a distributed system or not. Would it depend on whether or not that server was actually on several boxes, or would it not be one if it was one box per server?
The advantages and disadvantages of a distributed system seem obvious. More redundancy, more compatibility, and scalability. While response time may be an issue, these seems like issues that can be solved with good design or scalability - though like in all systems, security is an issue.
In the discussion of peer-to-peer systems, it is mentioned that Intel and Boeing have implemented a version of them to work on hard computations. It's mentioned that this software runs while the workers have gone home, but I wonder if they run whilst the normal business day is going? Does this adversely affect the performance of the individual local computers if so, or is the priority set very low?
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