Computing Environments- Traditional Computing, Client-Server Computing, Peer-to-Peer Computing, Web-Based Computing




A brief overview on how computer-system organization and major operating-system components are used in a variety of computing environments.

Traditional Computing

 As computing matures, the lines separating many of the traditional computing environments are blurring. Consider the "typical office environment." Just a few years ago, this environment consisted of PCs connected to a network, with servers providing file and print services. Remote access was awkward, and portability was achieved by use of laptop computers. Terminals attached to mainframes were prevalent at many companies as well, with even fewer remote access and portability options The current trend is toward providing more ways to access these computing environments. Web technologies are stretching the boundaries of traditional computing. Companies establish portals, which provide web accessibility to their internal servers.

 Network computers are essentially terminals that understand web-based computing. Handheld computers can synchronize with PCs to allow very portable use of company information. Handheld PDAs can also connect to wireless networks to use the company's web portal (as well as the myriad other web resources). At home, most users had a single computer with a slow modem connection to the office, the Internet, or both. Today, network-connection speeds once available only at great cost are relatively inexpensive, giving home users more access to more data. These fast data connections are allowing home computers to serve up web pages and to run networks that include printers, client PCs, and servers. Some homes even have firewalls to protect their networks from security breaches. Those firewalls cost thousands of dollars a few years ago and did not even exist a decade ago. In the latter half of the previous century, computing resources were scarce. (Before that, they were nonexistent!)

For a period of time, systems were either batch or interactive. Batch system processed jobs in bulk, with predetermined input (from files or other sources of data). Interactive systems waited for input from users. To optimize the use of the computing resources, multiple users shared time on these systems. Time-sharing systems used a timer and scheduling algorithms to rapidly cycle processes through the CPU, giving each user a share of the resources. Today, traditional time-sharing systems are uncommon. The same scheduling technique is still in use on workstations and servers, but frequently the processes are all owned by the same user (or a single user and the operating system). User processes, and system processes that provide services to the user, are managed so that each frequently gets a slice of computer time. Consider the windows created while a user is working on a PC, for example, and the fact that they may be performing different tasks at the same time.

Client-Server Computing

As PCs have become faster, more powerful, and cheaper, designers have shifted away from centralized system architecture. Terminals connected to centralized systems are now being supplanted by PCs. Correspondingly, userinterface functionality once handled directly by the centralized systems is increasingly being handled by the PCs. As a result, many of todays systems act as server systems to satisfy requests generated by client systems. This form of specialized distributed system, called client-server system, has the general structure depicted in Figure 1.11. Server systems can be broadly categorized as compute servers and file servers:

Computing Environments- Traditional Computing, Client-Server Computing, Peer-to-Peer Computing, Web-Based Computing

• The compute-server system provides an interface to which a client can send a request to perform an action (for example, read data); in response, the server executes the action and sends back results to the client. A server running a database that responds to client requests for data is an example of such a svstem.

The file-server system provides a file-system interface where clients can create, update, read, and delete files. An example of such a system is a web server that delivers files to clients running web browsers.'

Peer-to-Peer Computing

 Another structure for a distributed system is the peer-to-peer (P2P) system model. In this model, clients and servers are not distinguished from one another; instead, all nodes within the system are considered peers, and each may act as either a client or a server, depending on whether it is requesting or providing a service.

Peer-to-peer systems offer an advantage over traditional client-server systems. In a client-server system, the server is a bottleneck; but in a peer-to-peer system, services can be provided by several nodes distributed throughout the network. To participate in a peer-to-peer system, a node must first join the network of peers. Once a node has joined the network, it can begin providing services to—and requesting services from—other nodes in the network. Determining what services are available is accomplished in one of two general ways:

  1. When a node joins a network, it registers its service with a centralized lookup service on the network. Any node desiring a specific service first contacts this centralized lookup service to determine which node provides the service. The remainder of the communication takes place between the client and the service provider.
  2. A peer acting as a client must first discover what node provides a desired service by broadcasting a request for the service to all other nodes in the network. The node (or nodes) providing that service responds to the peer making the request. To support this approach, a discovery protocol must be provided that allows peers to discover services provided by other peers in the network. Peer-to-peer networks gained widespread popularity in the late 1990s with several file-sharing services, such as Napster and Gnutella, that enable peers to exchange files with one another.

The Napster system uses an approach similar to the first type described above: a centralized server maintains an index of all files stored on peer nodes in the Napster network, and the actual exchanging of files takes place between the peer nodes. The Gnutella system uses a technique similar to the second type: a client broadcasts file requests to other nodes in the system, and nodes that can service the request respond directly to the client. The future of exchanging files remains uncertain because many of the files are copyrighted (music, for example), and there are laws governing the distribution of copyrighted material. In any case, though, peerto-peer technology undoubtedly will play a role in the future of many sendees, such as searching, file exchange, and e-mail.

Web-Based Computing

The Web has become ubiquitous, leading to more access by a wider variety of devices than was dreamt of a few years ago. PCs are still the most prevalent access devices, with workstations, handheld PDAs, and even cell phones also providing access. Web computing has increased the emphasis on networking. Devices that were not previously networked now include wired or wireless access. Devices that were networked now have faster network connectivity, provided by either improved networking technology, optimized network implementation code, or both.

The implementation of web-based computing has given rise to new categories of devices, such as load balancers, which distribute network connections among a pool of similar servers. Operating systems like Windows 95, which acted as web clients, have evolved into Linux and Windows XP, which can act as web servers as well as clients. Generally, the Web has increased the complexity of devices, because their users require them to be web-enabled.



Frequently Asked Questions

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Ans: Special-Purpose Systems The discussion thus far has focused on general-purpose computer systems that we are all familiar with. There are, however, different classes of computer systems whose functions are more limited and whose objective is to deal with limited computation domains. view more..
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Ans: File Replication Replication of files on different machines in a distributed file system is a useful redundancy for improving availability. Multimachine replication can benefit performance too: Selecting a nearby replica to serve an access request results in shorter service time. view more..
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Ans: Copy-on-Write we illustrated how a process can start quickly by merely demandpaging in the page containing the first instruction. However, process creation using the fork () system call may initially bypass the need for demand paging by using a technique similar to page sharing (covered in Section 8.4.4). This technique provides for rapid process creation and minimizes the number of new pages that must be allocated to the newly created process. view more..
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Ans: Computing Environments : Traditional Computing, Client-Server Computing, Peer-to-Peer Computing, Web-Based Computing view more..
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Ans: Scheduling Criteria Different CPU scheduling algorithms have different properties, and the choice of a particular algorithm may favor one class of processes over another. In choosing which algorithm to use in a particular situation, we must consider the properties of the various algorithms. Many criteria have been suggested for comparing CPU scheduling algorithms. Which characteristics are used for comparison can make a substantial difference in which algorithm is judged to be best. The criteria include the following: • CPU utilization. We want to keep the CPU as busy as possible. Conceptually, CPU utilization can range from 0 to 100 percent. In a real system, it should range from 40 percent (for a lightly loaded system) to 90 percent (for a heavily used system). view more..
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Ans: Thread Scheduling we introduced threads to the process model, distinguishing between user-level and kernel-level threads. On operating systems that support them, it is kernel-level threads—not processes—that are being scheduled by the operating system. User-level threads are managed by a thread library, and the kernel is unaware of them. To run on a CPU, user-level threads must ultimately be mapped to an associated kernel-level thread, although this mapping may be indirect and may use a lightweight process (LWP). In this section, we explore scheduling issues involving user-level and kernel-level threads and offer specific examples of scheduling for Pthreads. view more..
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Ans: Thread Libraries A thread library provides the programmer an API for creating and managing threads. There are two primary ways of implementing a thread library. The first approach is to provide a library entirely in user space with no kernel support. All code and data structures for the library exist in user space. This means that invoking a function in the library results in a local function call in user space and not a system call. view more..
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Ans: we illustrate a classic software-based solution to the critical-section problem known as Peterson's solution. Because of the way modern computer architectures perform basic machine-language instructions, such as load and store, there are no guarantees that Peterson's solution will work correctly on such architectures. However, we present the solution because it provides a good algorithmic description of solving the critical-section problem and illustrates some of the complexities involved in designing software that addresses the requirements of mutual exclusion, progress, and bounded waiting requirements. Peterson's solution is restricted to two processes that alternate execution between their critical sections and remainder sections. The processes are numbered Po and Pi. view more..
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Ans: Synchronization Hardware We have just described one software-based solution to the critical-section problem. In general, we can state that any solution to the critical-section problem requires a simple tool—a lock. Race conditions are prevented by requiring that critical regions be protected by locks. That is, a process must acquire a lock before entering a critical section; it releases the lock when it exits the critical section. view more..
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Ans: System Model A system consists of a finite number of resources to be distributed among a number of competing processes. The resources are partitioned into several types, each consisting of some number of identical instances. Memory space, CPU cycles, files, and I/O devices (such as printers and DVD drives) are examples of resource types. If a system has two CPUs, then the resource type CPU has two instances. Similarly, the resource type printer may have five instances. If a process requests an instance of a resource type, the allocation of any instance of the type will satisfy the request. If it will not, then the instances are not identical, and the resource type classes have not been defined properly. view more..
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Ans: Deadlock Characterization In a deadlock, processes never finish executing, and system resources are tied up, preventing other jobs from starting. Before we discuss the various methods for dealing with the deadlock problem, we look more closely at features that characterize deadlocks. view more..
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Ans: Atomicity We introduced the concept of an atomic transaction, which is a program unit that must be executed atomically. That is, either all the operations associated with it are executed to completion, or none are performed. When we are dealing with a distributed system, ensuring the atomicity of a transaction becomes much more complicated than in a centralized system. This difficulty occurs because several sites may be participating in the execution of a single transaction. The failure of one of these sites, or the failure of a communication link connecting the sites, may result in erroneous computations. Ensuring that the execution of transactions in the distributed system preserves atomicity is the function of the transaction coordinator. Each site has its own local transaction coordinator, which is responsible for coordinating the execution of all the transactions initiated at that site. view more..
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Ans: Kernel Modules The Linux kernel has the ability to load and unload arbitrary sections of kernel code on demand. These loadable kernel modules run in privileged kernel mode and as a consequence have full access to all the hardware capabilities of the machine on which they run. In theory, there is no restriction on what a kernel module is allowed to do; typically, a module might implement a device driver, a file system, or a networking protocol. Kernel modules are convenient for several reasons. Linux's source code is free, so anybody wanting to write kernel code is able to compile a modified kernel and to reboot to load that new functionality; however, recompiling, relinking, and reloading the entire kernel is a cumbersome cycle to undertake when you are developing a new driver. If you use kernel modules, you do not have to make a new kernel to test a new driver—the driver can be compiled on its own and loaded into the already-running kernel. view more..
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Ans: Disk Attachment Computers access disk storage in two ways. One way is via I/O ports (or host-attached storage); this is common on small systems. The other way is via a remote host in a distributed file system; this is referred to as network-attached storage. view more..
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Ans: Memory-Mapped Files Consider a sequential read of a file on disk using the standard system calls openQ, readO, and writeQ. Each file access requires a system call and disk access. Alternatively, we can use the virtual memory techniques discussed so far to treat file I/O as routine memory accesses. This approach, known as memory mapping a file, allows a part of the virtual address space to be logically associated with the file. view more..
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Ans: Efficiency and Performance Now that we have discussed various block-allocation and directorymanagement options, we can further consider their effect on performance and efficient disk use. Disks tend to represent a major bottleneck in system performance, since they are the slowest main computer component. In this section, we discuss a variety of techniques used to improve the efficiency and performance of secondary storage. view more..
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Ans: Recovery Files and directories are kept both in main memory and on disk, and care must taken to ensure that system failure does not result in loss of data or in data inconsistency. view more..
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Ans: Log-Structured File Systems Computer scientists often find that algorithms and technologies originally used in one area are equally useful in other areas. Such is the case with the database log-based recovery algorithms described in Section 6.9.2. These logging algorithms have been applied successfully to the problem of consistency checking. The resulting implementations are known as log-based transaction-oriented (or journaling) file systems. view more..




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