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Distributed processing of problem-solving applications for farmers

Published: 07 June 1982 Publication History

Abstract

Intercomputer data communication via modem and telephone promises to have an important impact on rural areas. Unattended and inexpensive late-night communication has the potential for providing routine, noninterruptive, and rapid information interchange. An application of intercomputer communication to reduce the cost of using remote timesharing services has been experimentally developed at North Dakota State University (NDSU). An agricultural problem-solving program from the AGNET system in Nebraska has been split into three parts: interactive input of user data, computation of results, and production of an output report. The interactive input is then carried out on a computer near the user, eliminating interactive long-distance communication costs. The data collected are transmitted to the AGNET timesharing machine for calculation. The transmission, including login, is rapidly carried out by the local machine, using a protocol interpreter developed at NDSU. The results of the calculations are then transmitted back in compact form to the user's machine, where they are formatted and displayed. Only a minute of connect time to AGNET is required instead of half an hour. The protocol interpreter used to do this is described in some detail. Such splitting of functions between computers promises to allow high-quality problem-solving services to be provided on central machines, with personal or local machines providing interactive input and printed output services.

References

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Anderson, D. North Dakota AGNET Programmer. Personal Interview, October, 1981.
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Anderson, R. H., and J. J. Gillogly. "Rand Intelligent Terminal Agent (RITA): Design Philosophy." R-1809-ARPA, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California, February 1976.
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Anderson, R. H., and J. J. Gillogly. "The Rand Intelligent Terminal Agent (RITA) as a Network Access Aid." AFIPS, Proceedings of the National Computer Conference (Vol. 45), 1976, pp. 501--509.
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Anderson, R. H., M. Gallegos, J. J. Gillogly, R. Greenberg, and R. Villanueva, "RITA Reference Manual." R-1808-ARPA, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California, September 1977.
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Cain, Steven. "Computer Age Farming at Your Doorstep." Successful Farming, 77 (1979), p. 46T.
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"UNIX Time-Sharing System." The Bell System Technical Journal, 57 (1978), pp. 1897--2312.
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Gammill, R. C. "GPMX---A Portable General Purpose Macro Processor Adapted for Preprocessing FORTRAN." AFIPS, Proceedings of the National Computer Conference, (Vol. 45), 1976, pp. 927--933.
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Gammill, R. C. "Position Paper: Personal Computers for Science in the 1980's." Proceedings of the Oregon Report on Computing, IEEE-sponsored conference, March 20--22, 1978 (also reprinted in ACM SIGPC Notes, 1 (1978), pp. 18--28, and as Rand Paper P-5954).
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Henkes, R. "Computers Come to the Farm." The Furrow, 84 (1979), pp. 2--5.
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Isaacson, P., R. C. Gammill. "Personal Computing." IEEE Computer, 11 (1978), pp. 86--97.
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Waterman, D. A. "Rule-Directed Interactive Transaction Agents: An Approach to Knowledge Acquisition." R-2171-ARPA, The Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California, February 1978.
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"Computer Marketing Looking Good in Debut." Successful Farming, 79 (1981), p. H10.
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cover image ACM Other conferences
AFIPS '82: Proceedings of the June 7-10, 1982, national computer conference
June 1982
857 pages
ISBN:088283035X
DOI:10.1145/1500774
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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  • AFIPS: American Federation of Information Processing Societies

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 07 June 1982

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