Number 221 - October 2001
Lending Out Your Excess Capacity
from Ask Leo by Leo Laporte
Tacoma News Tribune, Access Magazine, June 10, 2001
    Q Juno sent me a message saying it wants to use my computer's processor. Why would it do that? Should I get a new ISP?
    Name withheld

    A Juno is one of the few free Internet service providers still standing. It's not easy making money when you don't charge subscribers so Juno is considering another way of making money: using your home computer when you're not.

    This technique is called distributed computing. Groups like SETI@home: The Search for Extra terre strial Intelligence1 and the National Foundation for Cancer Research intel.com/cure2 use this method to do massive number crunching that would otherwise be too expensive for nonprofit organizations.

    Participants install a small program that runs in the background. The program downloads work from the Net, processes the data when your machine is idle and uploads the results when it's done. For a list of worthwhile distributed computing projects, visit Entropia3 or United Devices.3

    Juno plans to use the technique in projects for clients as a way to support its free service. Juno says participation is voluntary at this time, but users may
be required to participate in the future. Participants may also be required to leave their computers on all the time--a clear waste of energy4--but most computers have power to spare these days so you shouldn't notice any difference in speed.

TOGGLE Editor's Notes:
    1 We signed up to participate in the SETI project a couple of years ago and have contributed over 14,000 machine hours to the cause. The idea just appealed to us.

    2 Intel's VIP, Andy Grove, developed prostate cancer and wrote of his research of the various cures available before choosing radioactive "seeds" at Seattle's Swedish hospital. He wrote of his quest in a Business magazine a couple of years back, hence Intel's involvement in Cancer research.

    3 You may find a project which you find to be worth supporting by visiting one of these sites.

    4 As we have said before, we consider this "waste well-spent", when we compare it to driving our monster SUV, acquired to pull our travel trailer, but used for that purpose only a tiny part of the time. Not to mention many government and military programs... we could go on but you get the idea.
 
  Number 221 - October 2001