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Letters to Nature

Nature 412, 894-897 (30 August 2001) | doi:10.1038/35091039; Received 21 May 2001; Accepted 6 July 2001

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Parasitic computing

Albert-László Barabási1, Vincent W. Freeh2, Hawoong Jeong1 & Jay B. Brockman2

  1. Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA
  2. Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA

Correspondence to: Albert-László Barabási1 Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to A.-L.B. (e-mail: Email: alb@nd.edu).

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Reliable communication on the Internet is guaranteed by a standard set of protocols, used by all computers1. Here we show that these protocols can be exploited to compute with the communication infrastructure, transforming the Internet into a distributed computer in which servers unwittingly perform computation on behalf of a remote node. In this model, which we call 'parasitic computing', one machine forces target computers to solve a piece of a complex computational problem merely by engaging them in standard communication. Consequently, the target computers are unaware that they have performed computation for the benefit of a commanding node. As experimental evidence of the principle of parasitic computing, we harness the power of several web servers across the globe, which—unknown to them—work together to solve an NP complete problem2.