Distributed Computing (DCI)

Distributed systems include various possible configurations, such as personal computers, mainframes, minicomputers, workstations, etc. A computer program that operates in a distributed system is known as a distributed program, whereas the procedure for writing such programs are called distributed programming.

Distributed systems provide several benefits compared to centralized systems. These include:

• Scalability: The distributed system can be easily extended with the addition of more machines as required.
• Redundancy: Many machines can offer the same services. Therefore, even if one machine is unavailable, the tasks are unaffected. In addition, due to the use of many smaller machines, this redundancy is relatively inexpensive.

Distributed computing systems could operate on hardware provided by multiple vendors. It can make use of many different standards-based software components. These systems are self-sufficient and do not rely too much on the fundamental software. They are able to use a variety of communications protocols as well as operate on multiple operating systems. In order to carry out inter-machine communications, they use TCP/IP or SNA on Ethernet or Token Ring.

Computers used in distributed computing make use of a client-server model.