Architecture for a Fully Decentralized Peer-to-Peer Collaborative Computing Platform

Abstract

We present an architecture for a fully decentralized peer-to-peer collaborative computing platform, offering services similar to Cloud Service Provider’s Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) model, using volunteered resources rather than dedicated resources. This thesis is motivated by three research questions: (1) Is it possible to build a peer-to-peer col- laborative system using a fully decentralized infrastructure relying only on volunteered resources?, (2) How can light virtualization be used to mitigate the complexity inherent to the volunteered resources?, and (3) What are the minimal requirements for a computing platform similar to the PaaS cloud computing platform? We propose an architecture composed of three layers: the Network layer, the Virtual layer, and the Application layer. We also propose to use light virtualization technologies, or containers, to provide a uniform abstraction of the contributing resources and to isolate the host environment from the contributed environment. Then, we propose a minimal API specification for this computing platform, which is also applicable to PaaS computing platforms. The findings of this thesis corroborate the hypothesis that peer-to-peer collaborative systems can be used as a basis for developing volunteer cloud computing infrastructures. We outline the implications of using light virtualization as an integral virtualization primitive in public distributed computing platform. Finally, this thesis lays out a starting point for most volunteer cloud computing infrastructure development effort, because it circumscribes the essential requirements and presents solutions to mitigate the complexities inherent to this paradigm.