In the beginning

The Internet has seen remarkable growth over the last few years, both technologically and socially. The demand for real-time information has increased at exponential rates and has put existing information systems to the test. For this paper I decided to look at two new software projects that have emerged over the last few years: Cassandra and Hamachi. Cassandra is a distributed database that evolved from the needs of websites such as Twitter and Facebook, whose need for frequent and short updates was too taxing on standard RDBMSs. Hamachi, which is in part a commercial project now, started as an open-source project aimed at creating zero-config VPNs. The project is now part of LogMeIn but is still free to use for non-commercial purposes.

In normal implementation circumstances you would not find these two projects paired together, but the concept of having a distributed database over a reasonably secure connection was one I thought was worth exploring. Over the course of this paper I'll discuss both projects in a reasonable amount of detail before detailing my implementation experiment and experience.

Systems/Programs in the Space

Give an overview of the area you are examining. What systems/programs are out there?

Evaluated Systems/Programs

Describe the systems individually here - their key properties, etc. Use subsections to describe different implementations if you wish. Briefly explain why you made the selections you did.

Experiences/Comparison (multiple sections)

In multiple sections, describe what you learned.

Discussion

What was interesting? What was surprising? Here you can go out on tangents relating to your work

Conclusion

Summarize the report, point to future work.

References

Give references in proper form (not just URLs if possible, give dates of access).