Distributed networking is a

distributed computing A distributed system is a system whose components are located on different computer network, networked computers, which communicate and coordinate their actions by message passing, passing messages to one another from any system. Distributed com ...

network system where components of the program and data depend on multiple sources.

Overview

Distributed networking, used in

, is the network system over which

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

ming,

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated documentation and data. This is in contrast to hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. At the lowest programming level, executable code consists ...

, and its data are spread out across more than one computer, but communicate complex messages through their nodes (computers), and are dependent upon each other. The goal of a distributed network is to share resources, typically to accomplish a single or similar goal. Usually, this takes place over a

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections are ...

, however, internet-based computing is rising in popularity. Typically, a distributed networking system is composed of processes, threads, agents, and

distributed object In distributed computing, distributed objects are objects (in the sense of object-oriented programming) that are distributed across different address spaces, either in different processes on the same computer, or even in multiple computers conn ...

s. Merely distributed physical components is not enough to suffice as a distributed network; typically distributed networking uses

concurrent Concurrent means happening at the same time. Concurrency, concurrent, or concurrence may refer to: Law * Concurrence, in jurisprudence, the need to prove both ''actus reus'' and ''mens rea'' * Concurring opinion (also called a "concurrence"), a ...

program execution.

Client/server

Client/server computing is a type of distributed computing where one computer, a client, requests data from the server, a primary computing center, which responds to the client directly with the requested data, sometimes through an agent. Client/server distributed networking is also popular in web-based computing. Client/Server is the principle that a client computer can provide certain capabilities for a user and request others from other computers that provide services for the clients. The Web's

Hypertext Transfer Protocol The Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is an application layer protocol in the Internet protocol suite model for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. HTTP is the foundation of data communication for the World Wide Web, ...

is basically all client/server.

Agent-based

A distributed network can also be agent-based, where what controls the agent or component is loosely defined, and the components can have either pre-configured or dynamic settings.

Decentralized

Decentralization Decentralization or decentralisation is the process by which the activities of an organization, particularly those regarding planning and decision making, are distributed or delegated away from a central, authoritative location or group. Conce ...

is where each computer on the network can be used for the computing task at hand, which is the opposite of the client/server model. Typically, only idle computers are used, and in this way, it is thought that networks are more efficient. Peer-to-peer (P2P) computation is based on a decentralized, distributed network, including the

distributed ledger A distributed ledger (also called a shared ledger or distributed ledger technology or DLT) is the consensus of replicated, shared, and synchronized digital data that is geographically spread (distributed) across many sites, countries, or institutio ...

technology such as

blockchain A blockchain is a type of distributed ledger technology (DLT) that consists of growing lists of records, called ''blocks'', that are securely linked together using cryptography. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a ...

Mesh

Mesh networking A mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes (i.e. bridges, switches, and other infrastructure devices) connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate wit ...

is a local network composed of devices (nodes) that was originally designed to communicate through radio waves, allowing for different types of devices. Each node is able to communicate with every other node on the network.

Advantages of distributed networking

Prior to the 1980s, computing was typically centralized on a single low-cost desktop computer. But today, computing resources (computers or servers) are typically physically distributed in many places, which distributed networking excels at. Some types of computing doesn't scale well past a certain level of parallelism and the gains of superior hardware components, and thus is bottle-necked, such as by Very Large Scale Instruction Words. By increasing the number of computers rather than the power of their components, these bottlenecks are overcome. Situations where

resource sharing In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another compu ...

becomes an issue, or where higher

fault tolerance Fault tolerance is the property that enables a system to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of one or more faults within some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the ...

is needed also find aid in distributed networking. Distributed networking is also very supportive of higher levels of anonymity.

Cloud computing

Enterprises with rapid growth and scaling needs may find it challenging to maintain their own distributed network under the traditional client/server computing model. Cloud Computing is the utility of distributed computing over Internet-based applications, storage, and computing services. A cloud is a cluster of computers or servers that are closely connected to provide

scalable Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...

, high-capacity computing or related tasks.

References

{{Reflist File sharing networks Distributed data storage