Grid computing for the masses: An overview

Abstract

The common goals of the Grid and peer-to-peer communities have brought them in close proximity. Both the technologies overlay a collaborative resource-sharing infrastructure on existing (public) networks. In realizing this shared goal, however, they concentrate on significantly contrasting issues. The Grid paradigm focuses on performance, control, security, specialization, and standardization. On the other hand, the peer-to-peer paradigm concentrates on fault tolerance, resilience, decentralization, and peer cooperation. In this paper, we discuss Grid usage models including traditional Grids, ad hoc Grids, and federated Grids. We compare these approaches to peer-to-peer computing and discuss the issues involved in the convergence of the two paradigms. © Springer-Verlag 2004.