Re: distrbuted nmap?

["Juan M. Bello Rivas" <jmbello () itchy coverlink es>]

Hi Jose,

On Mon, Mar 20, 2000 at 06:53:17PM -0500, Jose Nazario wrote:
> regarding the use of PVM, it was raised that PVM, MPI and other Beowulf
> solutions are fantastic for CPU intensive applications (like the molecular
> dynamics simulations i run from time to time) but would be overkill for
> something ike nmap.
>
> i quite disagree. i think that PVM actually provides a nice framework for
> what you would want to do with a distributed application like nmap. like
> TCP, PVM keeps track of connections and messages sent, it has very good
> error handling, dynamic group assignments and the like. it runs over TCP,
> so it provides a nice reliable data stream over the WAN. heck, it even
> works on NT (for the reportedly in the works nmap port to NT) these are
> all the kinds of things you would demand in a framework for a distrubuted
> application. just because it's not CPU intensive does not mean it's
> overkill, i'm just asking why reinvent the wheel? 

        I do also think PVM is overkill for a distributed implementation of
nmap. While agreeing totally with you in the usefulness of the PVM API when
I set up PVM some time ago I found it a bit heavy-weight since it depends on
rlogind and stuff like that. I have the feeling that it would make the
deployment of a distributed nmap harder than an ad-hoc solution (please
correct me if I'm wrong).

See you

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