World Community Grid
Rutgers is a participant in World Community Grid TM. This is a project of IBM and a group of leading foundations, public organization and academic institutions, to harness otherwise unused computing power to focus on humanity's most pressing projects.
In order to participate in this project, you will need to install software on your computer. The web page has links to let you download it.
IBM has asked our users to join a Rutgers "team", so they can track usage at Rutgers. Please see the third section of this page for more information.
The software will detect when you are online, will download a task, and will begin working on it using your PC's idle resources, even while you continue to use your computer for your usual activities. And, unless you choose to view the task graphic via the screen saver during the setup prompts, you won't even know the software is there. If the screen saver is running, you can see the progress of a task and review the computational activity of your computer.
You continue to have full control over the software while it is on your computer, including the software's activity and schedule.
What the software does; security
The software periodically connects with a server at IBM, to get assignments and to return results. It uses only normal web communications (for the technically-minded, ports 80 and 443, outgoing). Thus if your firewall permits you to connect to surf the web, it should allow this.
Because all connections are initiated from the client, this doesn't open you to attack. However there is a risk with any software downloaded from the web: if IBM has made a mistake, it could do unexpected things.
If you are in an environment that does not permit users to install software downloaded from the Internet, you'll want to look at this very closely before installing it. If you or your users routinely download browsers or other software, this would appear to be neither more nor less risky than that.
To my knowledge, no one at Rutgers has done a security analysis of the software. The Windows code is based on commercial software that has been used for other large projects, and has been in use in the World Community Grid for at least a year. The Linux code is Boinc, open-source code from Berkeley.
The Rutgers University Team
IBM has requested Rutgers to create a "team" for everyone who is using the software. The primary purpose is so that IBM can tell how many people are using it.
When you download the software from www.worldcommunitygrid.org, you will be asked to create a member name. When you create your member name, you can also join the Rutgers University team, as follows:
- At the end of the form for creating a member, note "Select a Team".
- Click "Select", this will bring up a window to find a team.
- Type "Rutgers" into the Search, and select "Rutgers University". There are several teams with "Rutgers" in the name. "Rutgers University" is the official team.
If you have created a member without selecting a team, you can add the Rutgers University team as follows:
Go to the Rutgers University team, and click "join this team." You will be asked to login with your member name and password.
World Community Grid, the name and logo, are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the U.S., other countries, or both, and are used under license.