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The differences between distributed and parallel computing are not that clear to me. I've a "distributed systems" course this semester, and of course there's a project which I should work on. I'm interested in security, so I picked a security-related project, I chose to work on a password-cracker system, please don't get me wrong, it's for educational purposes!

The system consists of several processors/computers in which that each computer will receive a request to crack a hashed password, then if the computer is busy (probably working on other password) it will hands over the request to one of its peers (some computer connected via the same network), and if the computer was free/idle it will handle the request.

I'm wondering if this mechanism is considered as a distributed or as a parallel computing,. And some might consider this as a collaborative computing. Please guide me to the right path.

Thanks in advance :)

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Distributed computing -- spreading a computation across different network nodes.

Parallel computing -- allowing multiple parts of a computation to happen at the same time.

I don't think the architecture you describe is either distributed or parallel.

It sounds like you have one machine delegating work to others. In that case, no two machines are working on the same task at the same time. If so, you're not actually distributing the task across multiple nodes, so you shouldn't call it distributed computing.

If the machine that is working on a task has multiple threads or processes working at the same time, then you could consider it a parallel computation.

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And if he'd gave every computer a given range of values on which to try it's password cracking "luck", then it would be distributed.
@mhitza actually that is what I'm thinking to do, and what if I break the password into several values and each machine tries to crack the specified value?!
what would you call it then, if you have a central controller giving out many independent tasks to a number of separate nodes?

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