This concept involves the creation of a software system that runs programs and stores data across a number of different computers, an idea pervasive today. A simple form is the central computer (such as in a bank or credit card company) with which thousands of terminals communicate to submit transactions. While this system is in some sense distributed, it is not really decentralized. Most of the work is done by the central computer, which is not dependent on the terminals for its own functioning. However, responsibilities can be more evenly apportioned between computers.
Today the World Wide Web is in a sense the world’s largest distributed computing system. Millions of documents stored on hundreds of thousands of servers can be accessed by millions of users’ Web browsers running on a variety of personal computers. While there are rules for specifying addresses and creating and routing data packets (see Internet and tcp/ip), no one agency or computer complex controls access to information or communication (such as e-mail).
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