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Client-Server Model
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A distributed application architecture that divides work between providers of a resource or service, servers, and requesters of it, clients, communicating over a network. Formulated during the 1960s and 1970s by computer scientists building ARPANET at Stanford Research Institute, who used the terms server-host and user-host, both already visible in early RFC documents (RFC 4 and RFC 5); an early concrete example is remote job entry on IBM's OS/360, announced in 1964, where the request was to run a job and the response was its output. The word client was formally defined in a 1978 Xerox PARC paper on distributed file systems, and server did not enter general use until 1992.
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Disputed
Origin YearThe underlying request-and-response division of labor is visible by 1964 (OS/360 remote job entry) and the server-host/user-host terminology by the early ARPANET RFCs, but the word client was not formally defined until a 1978 Xerox PARC paper and server only entered general use by 1992; no single year cleanly founds the model. Core PrincipleOne program (the client) initiates a request over a network, and another program (the server) fulfills it, a division of labor rather than a claim about which machine is more powerful. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Client-server model
Wikimedia FoundationHistory sectionQuote, History section
the request was to run a job, and the response was the output
1. Wikipedia: Client-server model
1. Wikipedia: Client-server model
Wikimedia FoundationIn Field: Distributed Computing, Distributed computing sectionQuote, In Field: Distributed Computing, Distributed computing section
In the case of distributed computing projects such as SETI@home and the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, while the bulk of the operations occur on the client side, the servers are responsible for coordinating the clients, sending them data to analyze, receiving and storing results, providing reporting functionality to project administrators, etc.
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