Networking Models &

Applications:
Dr. SHUCHITA UPADHYAYA BHASIN
Professor
Department of Computer Science & Applications
 CONTENTS

• Centralized, Decentralized, and Distributed

• Client-Server and Peer-to-Peer
• File sharing & Web- based
• Content Distribution Networks

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 DECENTRALIZED CENTRALIZED
• In a decentralized network, there are multiple  In a centralized network, all users connect to a
centralized owners who own a copy of the specific server.
resource/information. If a server crashes, another
owner/server could provide that data because he  The server then stores data, gives access to
holds the exact replica of the resource. information or updates it.
• Decentralization may however result in duplication  The most basic scenario is a webserver. Users
of data, which can lead to data inconsistencies connect to this server via a website and interact
within an organization. Decentralization can also be with it.
expensive in terms of increased costs for hardware, Pros:
maintenance, support, and operation since each
department in an organization has its own system.  Easy to setup
• A decentralised system is a system in which lower  Easy maintainable
level components operate on local information to  Easy to use for developers
accomplish global goals. Cons:
Pros:  If the server crashes, the system is not
 Increased performance in comparison with centralized available
systems, because servers could be placed all over the  Security risks
world
 Fail-safety  Latency problems for users who want to
connect to a server that is far away. For
Cons:
 Maintenance costs
example, a user that connects from the USA to
 Security risks a webserver to Europe normally has long
loading times.

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 Distributed Networks

• A distributed network takes the

decentralized system to the next level.
• There are no more centralized owners.
Now, everyone could get a copy of the
resource if he wants to.
• In addition to that, everyone has equal
access to data, but user privileges can be
enabled if needed.
Pros:
Transparent
Secure
Scalable
Fail-safety
Cons:
Hard to develop
Maintenance costs

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 CLIENT-SERVER
 Client–server model of computing is a distributed application structure
that partitions tasks or workloads between service providers, called
servers, and service requesters, called clients.
 Often clients and servers communicate over a computer network on
separate hardware, but both client and server may reside in the same
system also.
 A server machine is a host that is running one or more server programs
which share its resources with clients.
 Servers are powerful computers or processes dedicated to managing disk
drives (file servers), printers (print servers), or network traffic (network
servers).
 A client does not share any of its resources, but requests a server's
content or service function.
 Clients therefore initiate communication sessions with servers which await
 Central data management: Data is stored on a
(listen to) incoming requests. server, which can be used or manipulated
from different clients.
 Clients are PCs or workstations on which users run applications. Clients
rely on servers for resources, such as files, devices, and even processing  Specific types of servers include web servers,
power. ftp servers, application servers, database
 Server: As a provider of services the server must compute requests and servers, name servers, mail servers, file
has to return the results. The decision to outsource a service from an servers, print servers, and terminal servers.
application in the form of a server can have different reasons:

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

Client: • Thin clients have a specialized operating system and are usually
• A client is typically a device or a process diskless (no hard disk for local storage).
which uses the service of one or more • They use the network to access their applications dynamically.
servers.
• For example, if you need a word processor, a copy of a word
• Since clients are often the interface processing application is downloaded from an application
between server-information and people, service provider’s network server to your NC (thin client) and
clients are designed for information stored in the NC’s memory (RAM).
input and visualization of information.
• Any documents you create are uploaded to and saved on the
• Early clients had only the task to display ASP’s server.
the application that was running on the
server and to forward inputs of the user • The idea behind thin client technology is to offer businesses or
to the server. All computations were/are organizations a tremendous reduction in cost.
done on the server. Such a system is • By incorporating a massive server, or server “farm”, with user
known as a thin client and the concept NCs, companies can save money compared with purchasing fully
is known as thin client computing. loaded PCs for each user and dealing with their management
• Collectively called network computers and maintenance.
(NCs), these devices are inexpensive • A thin client has limited local resources in terms of hardware
network access units with functionality and software
that allows some applications to be
executed, but they are not as complete as • A thick client is functionally rich in terms of hardware and
what it could be on a traditional PC or software. Thick clients are capable of storing and executing their
workstation. own applications as well as network centric ones. Thick client
typically refers to a personal computer.
By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin
• Client-Server architectures can be Flat architecture Hierarchical architecture

classified into flat and hierarchical. If

the Client-Server model is flat, all
clients communicate only with a single
server .
• If the Client-Server model is
hierarchical the servers of one level are
acting as clients to higher level servers.
 Users accessing banking services from their computer use
• Functions such as email exchange, web a web browser client to send a request to a web server at
access and database access, are built a bank.
on the client–server model.  That program may in turn forward the request to its own
database client program that sends a request to a
• For example, a web browser is a client database server at another bank computer to retrieve the
account information.
program running on a user's computer  The balance is returned to the bank database client, which
that may access information stored on in turn serves it back to the web browser client displaying
a web server on the Internet. the results to the user.

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

Advantages
• In most cases, a client–server architecture Disadvantages
enables the roles and responsibilities of a
computing system to be distributed among Client-Server-Systems are very expensive and
several independent computers that are known to need a lot of maintenance.
each other only through a network. The server constitutes a single point of
• This creates an additional advantage to this failure. If failures on the server occur, it is
architecture: greater ease of maintenance. For possible that the system suffers heavy delay
example, it is possible to replace, repair, upgrade, or complete breaks down, which can
or even relocate a server while its clients remain potentially block hundreds of clients from
both unaware and unaffected by that change. working with their data or their applications.
• All data is stored on the servers, which generally As the number of simultaneous client
have far greater security controls than most requests to a given server increases, the
clients. Servers can better control access and server can become overloaded.
resources, to guarantee that only those clients
with the appropriate permissions may access and
change data.
• Since data storage is centralized, updates to that
data are far easier to administer.
• All the data are processed on the server, and only
the results are returned to the client. This reduces
the amount of network traffic between the
server and the client machine, improving network
performance.

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 PEER-TO-PEER
• Peer-to-peer network is a distributed
network architecture, where the
participants of the network share a part of
their resources, which are accessible by
other peers directly.
• The resources encompass computing
power, data (storage and content),
network bandwidth, and presence
(computers, humans and other resources).
• In peer-to-peer architectures, each host  Nodes in peer-to-peer networks do not only act as
or instance of the program can clients, but they exhibit server functions as well.
simultaneously act as both a client and a
server, and each has equivalent This is why nodes or peers have been described as
responsibilities and status. SERVENTS (SERVer + cliENTS).
• The major drawbacks of client/server  Peer-to-Peer systems can be classified into four
systems in comparison with peer-to-peer classes, namely distributed computing (e.g.,
is that the client/server models suffer SETI@home), file sharing (e.g., Gnutella, Napster,
from inefficient allocation of resources Freenet), communication and collaboration (e.g.,
and limited scalability which can result in Jabber, MSN Messenger) and platforms (e.g., JXTA,
bottlenecks and eventually in single points .NET).
of failure.
By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin
Advantages
Disadvantages
• In a pure Peer-to-Peer architecture there is no
single point of failure, which means, if one peer • Today many applications need a high security
breaks down, the rest of the peers are still able to standard, which is not satisfied by current
communicate. Peer-to-Peer solutions.
• Peer-to-Peer provides the opportunity to take • The connections between the peers are
advantage of unused resources such as processing normally not designed for high throughput
power for computations and storage capacity. rates, even if the coverage of ADSL and Cable
modem connections is increasing.
• In Client-Server architectures, the centralized
system bears the majority of the cost of the • A centralized system or a Client-Server system
system. In Peer-to-Peer, all peers help spread the will work as long as the service provider keeps
cost, e.g. Napster used the file storage space of it up and running. If peers start to abandon a
participating peers to store all the files. Peer-to-Peer system, services will not be
available to anyone.
• Peer-to-Peer allows preventing bottleneck, such
as traffic overload in central server architecture, • Most search engines work best when they can
because Peer-to-Peer can distribute data and search a central database rather than launch
balance request across the net without using a a meta search of peers. This problem is
central server. circumvented by the hybrid Peer-to-Peer
architecture
• There is better scalability due to a lack of
centralized control. A new peer can be added easily
to the system without increasing load on any
central facility.
• In P2P networks, clients provide resources, which
may include bandwidth, storage space, and
computing power. As nodes arrive and demand on
the system increases, the total capacity of the
system also increases. By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin
Applications • In bioinformatics, drug candidate
identification
• File Sharing and Content Distribution:
Peer-to-peer content distribution is the • The sciencenet P2P search engine.
most well-known application area of peer- • Skype, one of the most widely used internet
to-peer systems and it contains file sharing phone applications is using P2P technology.
systems (e.g. Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey, Skype is a peer-to-peer VoIP(Voice over IP)
G2, FastTrack), distributed storage application that provides telephony, IM and
audio conferencing via a peer-to-peer system.
applications (e.g. Freenet) and content
delivery networks (e.g.Giraffic, Kontiki, • Instant messaging, telephony and online
Ignite, RedSwoosh chat
• Domain Name System for Internet
• Software publication and distribution information retrieval
(Linux, several games); via file sharing • Cloud computing.
networks.
• Grid Computing: Grid computing is the
• Delivery of TV content over a P2P network coordinated use of resources – computers,
(P2PTV) processor capacity, sensors, software, storage
capacity and data – which is being shared
• Peercasting for multicasting streams. within a dynamic and continuously changing
• Research like the Chord project, the PAST group of individuals, institutions and
resources.
storage utility, the P-Grid, and the
CoopNet . • Spotify uses a peer-to-peer network along
with streaming servers to stream music to its
desktop music player

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 FILE SHARING
File sharing systems are divided into two
• To avoid problems of client-server model where groups:
centralization of resources to be shared was Pure P2P systems and hybrid P2P systems.
highlighted, Peer-to-Peer (P2P) computing  In pure P2P systems all peers are equal and
emerged to make services and applications each peer is acting both as a client and as a
server. In such systems any peer can be
distributed, decentralized, and perhaps foremost, removed from the network without affecting
operation of the network.
self-organizing  Gnutella and FreeNet are examples of pure
P2P systems.
• With the growing desire to instantaneously On the other hand, in hybrid P2P systems
access software, music, movies etc. P2P file- majority of peers are equal, but some peers
sharing provides an inexpensive and quick (and have special functions and are called servers.
E.g. is Napster, the first and widely known P2P
many a times illegal!) means of access to such file sharing system, these special peers were
commodities. used for searching purposes.
With P2P file-sharing numerous peers
• P2P file-sharing contributes to a major fraction participate in the file-sharing community.
of traffic in today’s Internet. Thus, each peer functions as a server,
contributing resources to the community,
• A distributed file-system is a particular example as well as functioning as a client –
of an application, or service, that can be requesting files.
efficiently implemented using peer-to-peer
technology By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin
 WEB-BASED
• Web-Based model is a communication • The Web is based on three main
model that has emerged as a result of standard technological components:
the Internet and its World Wide Web A language for specifying the contents and
(WWW) service. layout of pages that are displayed by web
browsers.
• As a model, the Web can be viewed as Uniform Resource Locators (URLs), which
a collection of Internet-based clients identify documents and other resources
and servers that speak the same stored as part of the Web.
language, namely, the Hypertext A client-server architecture, with standard
Transfer Protocol (HTTP). rules for interaction (for eg.,HTTP) by
which browsers and other clients fetch
• Through commonly available web documents and other resources from web
browser software such as Netscape and servers.
Internet Explorer, users use the Web to
retrieve and view documents of many
types, to listen to audio streams and
view video streams, and to interact
with an unlimited set of services.

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 Content Distribution Network
• Content distribution network—also known as a content
delivery network—is a large, geographically distributed
network of specialized servers that accelerate the
delivery of web content and rich media to internet-
connected devices.
• CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a highly-distributed
platform of servers that helps minimize delays in loading
web page content by reducing the physical distance
between the server and the user. This helps users
around the world view the same high-quality content
without slow loading times.
• Without a CDN, content origin servers must respond to
every single end user request. This results in significant
traffic to the origin and subsequent load, thereby
increasing the chances for origin failure if the traffic
spikes are exceedingly high or if the load is persistent.
• By responding to end user requests in place of the
origin and in closer physical and network proximity to The primary technique that a content distribution
the end user, a CDN offloads traffic from content servers network (CDN) uses to speed the delivery of web
and improves the web experience, thus benefiting both
the content provider and its end users. content to end users is edge caching, which entails
• The world's largest content distribution network, owned storing replicas of static text, image, audio, and video
and operated by Akamai, spans approximately 300,000 content in multiple servers around the "edges" of the
servers in more than 130 countries and within more internet, so that user requests can be served by a
than 1,500 networks around the world.
nearby edge server rather than by a far-off origin server.

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin

 EXERCISE
1. Explain the various networking models that originated along with
advances in networking technologies.
2. Distinguish between client-server model and peer-to-peer model
of networking.
3. Derive the similarity between peer-to-peer model and file sharing
model.
4. Explain decentralized, centralized and distributed systems.
5. Bring out the similarity or distinction between client-server and
web based models of networking.
6. What is a Content Distribution Network?

By Dr. Shuchita Upadhyaya Bhasin