Talk:Decentralized computing

These pages seem to be on the same topic but with different spellings of 'decentralised' and a slightly different name. I suggest merging Decentralised computer system into this page as this page has more information.

Also does decentralised computing have anything to do with distributed computing and should this be linked or merged? Lettyce 07:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree that they should be merged. I also think that we should remove Decentralized computing from Category:Centralized computing and  simply  refer to the category as an antonym.   Bartledan (talk) 15:08, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I would second that. --mgarde (talk) 13:52, 25 November 2009 (UTC)


 * Having recently (2009) written a thesis that makes extensive use of "decentralized" to refer to an hybrid of a peer-to-peer system and a client-server system with a very thin server-side, and having done my share of reading papers, I can say that this term doesn't seem currently notorious even in papers, and thus seems kind of irrelevant for an encyclopedia. I'm speaking as someone that actually likes this term. What I mean is that, currently, this term seems to have little usage and, as a consequence, you end up having to define it explicitly whenever you use it. I like the term, but I don't like the current page, and I don't think I'd have material to write a general article about it either. EDIT: note that the references of this article say "peer-to-peer" and "distributed" in their titles... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.115.88.185 (talk) 03:30, 16 March 2010 (UTC)


 * There is a clear nuance between decentralised and distributed networks: decentralised means "without a center", while distributed means "spread out over several nodes". For instance, the whole cloud ecosystem is distributed (comprising many computers) but very centralised: it's the service provider (e.g. Amazon Web Services) that coordinates the whole ecosystem. On the other hand, the e-mail system is decentralised (and distributed): there are many mail providers (yahoo.com, google.com, or any private mail server), but no central entity coordinating how mails are sent/received worldwide. This page belongs on its own. I will try to clarify it when I get time. --Le Zinzographe (talk) 15:13, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

"The origins of decentralized computing originate from the work of David Chaum." This is very wrong! SMTP (the e-mail protocol) is decentralised, as is IP. David Chaum proposed the first anonymity network, and his proposal was indeed decentralised. But, really, the Internet was originally made out of many decentralised protocols! And, to this day, it is still quite decentralised: if the Internet is centralised, can you name the center?--Le Zinzographe (talk) 15:13, 21 November 2020 (UTC)