On the design of a demand-based network-computing system: the Purdue University Network-Computing Hubs

Many of the systems that currently allow computing on the World Wide Web target specific tools. Such solutions tend to be non-reusable in spite of the fact that they involve a significant amount of duplicated effort. This paper describes the issues involved in the design of a demand-based network-computing system, and presents an operational prototype (the Purdue University Network-Computing Hubs, or PUNCH) that allows users to access and run existing software tools via standard Web browsers. The tools do not have to be written in any particular language, and access to source code is not required. The PUNCH infrastructure can be distributed in a manner that allows tools to be (user-transparently) executed wherever they reside. Currently, PUNCH contains over 30 tools from eight universities and four vendors, and serves more than 500 users. During the past three years, PUNCH users have logged more than 860,000 hits and have performed over 54,000 simulations.