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SDSC researcher Karan Bhatia has coauthored a paper published in the Global Grid Forum (GGF). The paper, "Peer-to-Peer Requirements on the Open Grid Services Architecture Framework," explores how the emerging Open Grid Service Infrastructure (OGSI) framework can support the development of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) applications that can be integrated into more traditional high-performance computing (HPC) Grid environments. The principal authors are Bhatia, Per Brand of the Swedish Institute of Computer Science (SICS), Sergio Mendiola of Oracle Corporation, Alex Mallet of Microsoft, and Karlo Berket of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The result of work by the OGSAP2P research group, the paper is part of the GGF Document Series available at http://www.ggf.org/ggf_docs_final.htm. The timely topic has also attracted media attention, and an article in Grid Computing Planet is posted at http://www.gridcomputingplanet.com/news/article.php/3524561.

Peer-to-peer systems such as Seti@home, Napster, and many others have assembled literally millions of peers to create resources that are unique in their power and capabilities. Now there is growing interest in both the enterprise and academic worlds in exploring possible synergies between Peer-to-Peer and Grid Computing. The idea is that peer resources, accessed through peer-to-peer applications, can become an important resource within the Grid Computing infrastructure, and peer-to-peer technologies can enable larger scale, higher performance Grid systems.

"The sheer number of desktop systems available today makes the potential advantages of interoperability between desktops and servers in a single grid system very compelling," said Bhatia. "Our work has focused on developing a set of requirements for Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA) that can open the door to interoperable Peer-to-Peer applications." The researchers point out that combining P2P networks with Grid systems involves major challenges. Compared with Grid systems, P2P systems can have significant differences such as less stringent models of security and trust, the machine user acting as administrator, dynamic IP addresses, and different usage models including file sharing, instant messaging, and collaboration. The paper addresses these challenges in application use cases including PC grid computing applications, file sharing applications, P2P content delivery, and resource discovery. The researchers studied issues include scalability, connectivity, dynamic and distributed discovery, security, resource availability and failure management, location awareness, and group support.