In a network of computing devices, many schemes of presenting applications to users of network connected devices may exist. Two common schemes are called “hosted” and “distributed”. In a hosted computing scheme, a user at a “terminal” computer may run applications and store data on a “mainframe” computer, processor, or processor array, whereas, in distributed computing, the running of various applications and storing of data is spread out among many personal workstations or office computers. In a popular version of distributed computing, the workstation computer provides some processing and storage capabilities while requesting further processing and storage capabilities from other “server” computers, as required.
The economics of simple database access (e.g. for car parts, airline tickets, hotel bookings, car rentals) have resulted in a continued and substantial presence of mainframe computer infrastructure (hosted computing) in commercial applications.
Distributed computing gained popularity in the 1980's as networking costs associated with hosted computing, in the form of high-density and high-demand Virtual Machine deployments, grew and powerful, low cost, stand-alone computers became available that outpaced mainframe processing capability. Commercial applications, where bandwidth and processor demand at the end user device remained low, retained their mainframe architectures and commensurate lower maintenance complexity. With the advent of the World Wide Web, and ever decreasing costs of networking, many operators have started to question the efficacy of the distributed model of provisioning powerful, but maintenance intensive equipment at the personal workstation.
As existing distributed computing schemes, relating to user applications and commensurate maintenance applications (security, backup, upgrade), become less competitive with hosted computing schemes due to the falling costs of bandwidth and connectivity, a solution resembling the hosted computing scheme may return to prominence. As the hosted computing scheme returns to prominence, a need will exist for the provision of data network services to network connected device components under control of a host computing device.