The Biggest Cloud Providers Are Botnets 116
Julie188 writes "Google is made up of 500,000 systems, 1 million CPUs and 1,500 gigabits per second (Gbps) of bandwidth, according to cloud service provider Neustar. Amazon comes in second with 160,000 systems, 320,000 CPUs and 400 Gbps of bandwidth, while Rackspace offers 65,000 systems, 130,000 CPUs and 300 Gbps. But these clouds are dwarfed by the likes of the really big cloud services, otherwise known as botnets. Conficker controls 6.4 million computer systems in 230 countries, with more than 18 million CPUs and 28 terabits per second of bandwidth."
How long before... (Score:4, Interesting)
How long before these botnets are so big and complex that they become similar in structure to the human brain and start thinking on their own?
interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
So it's actually Windows which is good at distributed computing...
Re:where did they get their numbers from? (Score:3, Interesting)
You'd be surprised how true that isn't. Even Windows is reasonably good at idletime priority processes - unless they intentionally used CPU that the user was trying to use, people would probably never notice.
A bigger problem is that there are very few useful problems that are practical to calculate on a distributed botnet of that fashion. It's been tried and failed before, more than once - most real-world problems involve large databases of confidential data, which is obviously inappropriate for a network like this on multiple levels.
Curious how these compare to the voluntary botnets (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Something where academia should learn from (Score:3, Interesting)
I believe you want access to systems running xGrid:
http://www.macresearch.org/openmacgrid [macresearch.org]
William
Re:where did they get their numbers from? (Score:3, Interesting)
Probably a bigger problem is that not many useful problems are "embarrassingly parallel". The nodes performing the computations need fast communication between other nodes in most parallel algorithms. The distributed algorithms that can be farmed out to idle computers need no communication with other nodes -- they perform work on the unit they were given and send the results back when they're done.
Does this mean Microsoft has the lead? (Score:3, Interesting)
Does the fact that 100% of these machines run Windows XP/Vista/7 mean that Microsoft is the biggest supplier of Cloud OS computing software (if you disregard the small patches from the botnet owners)?
Re:Something where academia should learn from (Score:3, Interesting)
BOINC [berkeley.edu] is an academic platform to do exactly what you describe.
Re:Something where academia should learn from (Score:3, Interesting)
Where can I rent this botnet legally?
you can't because the botnets are created illegally. There are "botnets" created for scientific use, such as folding@home, but these do not spread on their own and are completely opt in (and, more importantly, opt out). Perhaps someone should create an opt in cloud system where users who provide cpu power are given a cut of the profit from the distributed super computer use. Perhaps someone already has, as I'm not an expert on these things. I would doubt that the income from this would offset the increased electrical bills, though.
Social engineering... The worst culprit... (Score:2, Interesting)