Distributed computing by carrier-hosted agent

摘要

A method for operating a host layer of a distributed computing system on a wide area network includes attaching an agent to a client-requested carrier. The method includes receiving a request for specified content from a client node via the wide area network, and sending the content and an embedded agent to the client. The agent has program instructions configured to execute on the client node to perform a processing function that operates on raw data to produce process data. The method further includes sending the raw data to the client node and receiving the process data from the client node as it is processed by the agent. The host layer may comprise a web server hosting a web site containing consumer-oriented web pages, and the carrier may comprise an HTML page containing user content. The agent may comprise a web page-enabled application embedded in the HTML page.