Related Resources • Free ISPs • Is the Free Ride Over?

From Other Guides • Biotech

Elsewhere on the Web • Juno • DataSynapse • Distributed Science • Entropia • Parabon • Popular Power • SETI@home • United Devices • Life on the Edge • Dist. Comp. goes Commercial

Many of the free Internet access providers have bailed out and the ones that are left are struggling to stay afloat with dwindling advertising revenues. Juno has a very interesting plan to create a new revenue stream to support its free Internet access offering. Juno is planning to become a contractor for projects requiring the power of a supercomputer.

Juno will not be putting an enormous computing machine in the back room, instead they plan to harness the unused computing cycles of members' computers to create a huge supercomputer through distributed computing. This is a pretty exciting development for those of us who were getting a little worried that free Internet access might soon become a thing of the past. It's not surprising that Juno is the first to propose this model for supporting free Internet access. Juno is a company known for being innovative as they were the pioneers in offering widespread free email. They had a system in place using direct dial-up to local POPs before the advent of the now ubiquitous free Web based email.

The company plans to sign on commercial clients with large computing tasks who will pay handsomely for large amounts of computing time. They are primarily targeting firms doing biotechnology research and pharmaceutical development. Initially Juno will recruit volunteers to get the program up and running. It seems very likely that once they have the system working, participation will be required in exchange for free Internet access. From talking with Gary Baker, the Juno Public Relations Vice President, it sounds like the ad banner will also still be required. They are considering the possibility of offering other incentives such as entry into random drawings but there is no final decision on that at this writing..

At this point Juno may be the only free ISP planning to use the distributed computing model, but there are other sectors already using the spare computer capacity of hundreds of thousands of desktop computers. Some of these such as the SETI@home project are nonprofit and strictly a volunteer effort, but others are commercial. The commercial ones are already offering cash payment or prize drawings to get people to participate. Check the related resources box on this page for links to a number of these companies and organizations.

It looks like we are at the dawn of a new age in the utilization of Internet resources. The distributed computing model may be able to provide the support for free services that advertising alone cannot. It seems like a winning proposition all around. The World gets cheap computing horsepower to solve monumental problems, Internet users get to participate in important research and get free services and perks and perhaps some of the struggling dot-com companies may finally see a profit.