Distributed Computing Through Web Browser

This paper proposes a new approach for distributed computing. The main novelty consists in the exploitation of web browsers as clients, thanks to the availability of Javascript and AJAX. The described solution has two main advantages: it is client- free, so no additional programs have to be installed to perform the computation, and it requires low CPU usage, so clientside computation is no invasive for users. The solution is developed using AJAX technology embedding a pseudoclient into a web page that hosts che computation. While users browse the hosting web page, computation takes place resolving single subproblems and sending the solution to the serverside part of the system. The new architecture has been tested through various performance metrics by implementing two examples of distributed computing, the RSA crack and the correlation index between genetic data sets. Results have shown good feasibility of this approach.