Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence at Home
The SETI@Home project uses a client installed on your machine to process data generated by the Arecibo Observatory. The client is neatly written and works only when your computer is not in use which makes it a brilliant screensaver.
My contribution so far
I engaged this project on the 27th Nov 2004 and worked on it quite a bit between December 2005 and September 2008.
Apparently to date I have dedicated about 8,755 hours of CPU time to the project which is better than 97.97% contributors in the world as I am writing this.
Up to date statistics as generated by BoincStats:
Data processing statistics by BoincStats:
History of Computers
In all fairness I have dedicated most of the CPU power from the unused servers in the companies I have been working. Ideally I should have deployed the SETI@Home client as a standard screensaver for all client machines but I never dared do so due to the reaction of the users and potential implications in power consumption and CPU failure rates. These are of course just assumptions, I could not find any statistics or observations from somebody who has done so.
The client deployed on the server machines worked flawlessly with zero maintenance and continued to submit results years after I have left some companies. Which kind of shows what a waste unused CPU cycles are.
Below is a list of workhorses. Just look at the uptime and % of time dedicated. Some of these were production machines.
| Computer | Credits | Active Period | Uptime that period | % of time dedicated to SETI@Home |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz (4 processors) | 243,412 | 11 Jan 2006-25 Aug 2008 | 99.9955 % | 50.4051 % |
| GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz (2 processors) | 170,733 | 4 Feb 2006-20 Aug 2008 | 99.999 % | 47.1431 % |
| GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz (2 processors) | 144,896 | 11 Jan 2006-20 Aug 2008 | 100 % | 51.5416 % |
| AuthenticAMD AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2400+ (1 processors) | 86,084 | 4 Feb 2006-7 Aug 2008 | 99.7839 % | 20.1197 % |
| GenuineIntel Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 3.06GHz (4 processors) | 129,395 | 11 Jan 2006-23 Jan 2007 | 99.7074 % | 48.6162 % |
I must say I am quite impressed that a certain Exchange email server achieved 100% uptime even two years after the last maintenance performed on it :)
Plan going forward
Since we are living in the world of virtualization I intend to prepackage the client in a virtual appliance that can be used as a "filler" on any server/Hypervisor that is undergoing stress testing or is just sitting idle for no apparent reason. SETI@Home can make an ideal testing load for CPU if configured properly.
Questions and fears
- How do you know you are really processing SETI data? Maybe you are helping the US government process encrypted data. After all Arecibo IS a military site that had military intelligence uses, for example in locating Soviet radar installations by detecting their signals bouncing back off the Moon (according to Wikipedia).
- Running the client on a production server might not be the brightest idea since the client might crash your server. However experience is showing that the client is reliable and the client can run with an unprivileged account.
- The project specific client is downloaded and updated from a central website. This COULD be a malicious software communicating private information back to the central base.
- Can the client be tricked using DNS poisoning to download an update from a malicious website and run a compromised client?
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