One of the most well known about examples of cloud computing is the SETI @ Home project and is the best example of multiple computers across the world working together. Large data files that have been gathered from the radio telescopes are broken into small parts and distributed between the computers that are connected to the cloud. Each computer then processes and runs certain pattern matching algorithms on the data in an attempt to find a pattern that may constitute intelligent life. The processed file pieces are then sent back to the main computer along with all the results and stored in a database. Another example of this is the Torrent based file sharing network, where data is spread between individuals and delegated between those who require certain file “pieces”.
The problem with these two examples is that they are not true representations of a cloud network. The perfect cloud will know exactly what each connected machine is capable of doing and delegate work in the most efficient manner according to the capabilities of the connected machines. It would also combine all on its disk space, RAM and CPU power, all of which would be at the disposal of ever user. This gives rise to the need for power administration to enforce fair usage policies and system power partitioning. As an example, 75% military, 15% commercial and 10% public. 10% may not seem much for the public sector but if you consider how much computing power is available worldwide right now, it is a substantial amount!
A global cloud is the ultimate cloud network, where every computer on the planet is connected and work spread between them. The obvious advantage to this is the sheer power that will be available for solving tasks. The question that then comes to mind is why bother buying a computer when you could put all these computers in one place? The simplest answer would be convenience, you will need some kind of terminal to log into the cloud and there wouldn’t be a building big enough to house all the computers in the world. A major determining factor for transaction speed if the connection between all the connected computers. You might have the power of a million computers but if it takes hours to send instructions to them then that’s going to slow things down by quite a lot! Every machine in the network would also need the correct software installed in order to perform tasks given by other machines, so this calls for some kind of centralised software network that all the computers have access to. If a computer receives a job it does not have the software to do it with, then it can simply download it from the software database and get to work. Again this is why the connection speed of the cloud infrastructure will be vital, computers will need to send and receive not only instruction sets but also pieces of software, which could have huge file sizes. A major concern regarding cloud computing is security because you don’t know who or what is joining your cloud. For this reason it is vital that clouds validate and query every new machine that joins. A big advantage to cloud computing on this scale is data redundancy. There will be so much disk space that storing backups of everything will easily be possible several dozen times over! So if a machine loses data, that data will be instantly restored from other machines when it rejoins the cloud.
Cloud computing may also make certain things we take for granted today obsolete. For instance FTP (File Transfer Protocol) may become obsolete as there will no longer be a need to transfer files between client and server because both will exist as one, and data will be available immediately as is. Web sites will no longer be stored on web servers, they will be synonymous with the client/user! Naturally there is going to be a big shake up in the world of web services when this happens, and the only thing that will be left standing that we have today most likely will be the search engines.
Source:http://www.booshnews.com/2010/09/01/the-world-as-a-cloud/
