Distributed applet-based certifiable processing in client/server environments

Abstract

We describe and demonstrate the concept of Distributed Applet-based Certifiable Processing (DACP) in client/server environments for computational result correctness checking. DACP offers a low-overhead framework for Web-bused client/server environments in which a server can partition a given computational problem into a set of subproblems, distribute these sub-problems across a network to clients, and then efficiently certify the correctness of the sub-problem results returned by the clients before assembling them into a final answer for the original computational problem. The resource and time advantages of the DACP methodology are directly related to the effectiveness and efficiency offered by all innovative distributed implementation of the certification-trail approach to computational result checking. As a proof of the concept, we apply the DACP methodology, to a class of important computationally intensive problems. Our experimental assessment of DACP, performed with the use of Java applets which we have developed emphatically indicates that DACP offers significant advantages in comparison with other known result correctness checking techniques for reliable distributed computing in client/server environments.