Some solutions for peer-to-peer global computing

The emergence of Internet and new kind of architecture, like peer-to-peer (P2P) networks, provides great hope for distributed computation. However, the combination of the world of systems and the world of networking cannot be done as a simple melting of the existing solutions of each side. For example, it is quite obvious that one cannot use synchronized algorithms for global computing over large area network. We propose a nonexhaustive view of problems one could meet when he aims at building P2P architecture for global computing systems, which use asynchronous iterative algorithms. We also propose generic solutions for particular problems linked to both computing and networking sides. These problems involve the initialization of the computation (and its dual the conclusion), the task transparency over P2P network, and the routing in such networks. Finally a first computational experiment is presented for an asynchronous auction algorithm applied to the solution of the shortest path problem.