Check Climate Prediction News to see the announcement.

I predict that 'Climate Prediction' will work like a clock under BOINC and there will be a mass migration from SETI@Home. We will finally have a public project that works under BOINC.

The question is . . . Was this all planned or just happened to be this way?

Yes, presently CPDN project run fine because CPDN/BOINC beta test is private; the number of users is limited. Presently, the number of users is around 500 & the number of computers is around 750.

Yes, because CPDN WU take around a full month to process (with an average computer P4-1.6GHz), we may expect less problem than other projects but some questions were not answered yet ...

According to Carl Christensen, the chief software architect at climatepredition.net;

My main worry is that to download the CPDN/BOINC application requires 8MB of downloads (the monitor program, common data, climate model executable etc) -- so if 10K sign up in a short time that's 80GB of bandwidth needed.

I think workunit "delivery" which has been tough to keep stable on other BOINC projects is not that bad for us, only 10KB of files needed from one workunit to the next, and they happen in 3-6 weeks on average.

So my plan is to get two more scheduling servers in addition to this server (...) online by next week so help divvy up the big 8MB downloads (that first big initial download when you attach to CPDN with your BOINC client; not to forget the 1-2MB for downloading BOINC as well).

I hope the force be with us.

One of the CDPN Beta Tester

I think as reliable the BOINC is nowadays a BOINC Prediction would be much more innovative...

> According to Carl Christensen, the chief software architect at
> climatepredition.net;
>
> My main worry is that to download the CPDN/BOINC application requires 8MB
> of downloads (the monitor program, common data, climate model executable etc)
> -- so if 10K sign up in a short time that's 80GB of bandwidth needed.

[snip]

> So my plan is to get two more scheduling servers in addition to this server
> (...) online by next week so help divvy up the big 8MB downloads (that first
> big initial download when you attach to CPDN with your BOINC client; not to
> forget the 1-2MB for downloading BOINC as well).

[snip]

Why not distribute w/ bit torrent?

david

>
> Why not distribute w/ bit torrent?
>
> david
>
>
Because Bittorrent isn't as secure or as tested as Apache web server.
It's been around about a year, and has gone though a couple of major fixes. It runs.

> > Why not distribute w/ bit torrent?
> >
> > david
> >
> Because Bittorrent isn't as secure or as tested as Apache web server.
> It's been around about a year, and has gone though a couple of major fixes.
> It runs.

If bandwidth is an issue, then Apache's stability and security is moot.

You can distribute the 8MB files via bit torrent in a fashion that will check the final download for integrity w/ a hash, signature or other such verification. It would certainly keep the bandwidth free for other purposes...

For the .edu networks, the bandwidth is cheap.

It's probably cheaper for them to have an apache server get hammered by internet traffic for a week than to hire someone to set up and maintain a bittorrent tracker (and have the security updates all done and make sure that the server doesn't get hacked)

Since bittorrent is a new web technology, putting up a bittorrent tracker is a security risk (when compared to the more proven Apache web server).
Also, the majority of downloaders would tend to use ftp or http for transfers, so if only 10% of people use bittorrent, then they're not saving much bandwidth.

BitTorrent as a protocol is probably good enough for the job right now, I'd just be concerned with the trackers. It hasn't been around for a while, so nobody really knows just how secure the tracker servers are, and how easily they can be hacked. Other than than that, BitTorrent would be great IMHO.


What I really wanna see happen is mod_bt for Apache to work up to a production release version. It'll be really cool once you don't have to worry about maintaining a webserver AND tracker, with them being integrated.

_______________________________

well just to follow up on this, BitTorrent would be really interesting to use in the future, but luckily Janus Kristensen and others on the "BOINC Download Network" have setup mirrors for the boinc client. Also our "launch" was more "spread out" so we had 15K users or so come in within a week which was OK. We haven't hit any major media yet, but hopefully that will happen (BBC radio & TV spots, Weather Channel etc which caused a lot of signups on "old" CPDN last year). I tried putting us on slashdot but we got rejected in favor of the "hamster-powered night-light!"

> I tried putting us on slashdot but we got rejected in favor
> of the "hamster-powered night-light!"

Hey, they have to go with the important stuff, right? ;)