Abstract

Computation over planet-wide structures is hindered by administrative, architectural, and physical constraints. These problems are surmountable, but must be addressed by developing new models of programming and of computation. Global Information Structures The Internet communication protocols synthesize global information structures out of large collections of processors and networks. There are many kinds of such global structures. For example, the FTP protocol realizes a global file system, the Telnet protocol realizes a global multiprocessor, and the HTTP protocol realizes a global hypertext domain (the World-Wide Web) [3]. We would naturally like to have global information structures that are programmable. That is, we would like to use some global structures as global computers. A number of novel research issues arise if we want to program global computers. Global Computers The main characteristic of a global computer is its geographical distribution. Because of the slowness of...

Citations

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