It is increasingly common for computer users to have access to several computers on a network, and hence t o b e able to execute many of their tasks on any of several computers. The choice of which computers execute which tasks is commonly determined b y users based on a knowledge of computer speeds for each task and the current load on each computer. A number of task scheduling systems have been developed that balance the load of the computers on the network, but such systems tend to minimize

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... he idle time of the computers rather than minimize the idle time of the users. This paper focuses on the bene ts that can be achieved when the scheduling system considers both the computer availabilities and the performance o f each task on each computer. The SmartNet resource scheduling system is described and compared t o t w o di erent resource a l l o cation strategies: load balancing and user directed assignment. Results are p r esented where the operation of hundreds of di erent networks of computers running thousands of di erent mixes of tasks are simulated i n a b atch environment. These results indicate that, for the computer environments simulated, SmartNet outperforms both load balancing and user directed assignments, based on the maximum time users must wait for their tasks to nish.