Computational without Autonomy, Semi-Centralised Architecture

A semi-centralised peer-to-peer architecture is one that contains at least one central point of control or focus. The purpose of these control nodes can range from maintaining a stricter control over the whole network, to simply acting as a central reference point for the remaining nodes.

 

The two computational architectures are similar to the single centralised index server. As with this architecture, a single node within the network acts as a focal point for all the other nodes.

 

However for this particular architecture the remaining nodes of the network do not posses their own autonomy and are essentially controlled by the central node. For example, this central node can control and manage the distribution of data and assign processing tasks to each node within the network. Furthermore communication between nodes must be through the central index node.

 

Arguably, this type of architecture should not be considered a proper P2P architecture given that the nodes within the network do not possess their own autonomy and essentially act as slaves to the central node. However, applications have already been developed that adopt this architecture and these have been labelled as being P2P applications. Consequently this type of architecture has been included.