Participant startup

The BOINC core client is run in a BOINC home directory. On hosts that share a network file system, each host must have its own BOINC home directory.

The use of "proxy" servers (such as SETI@home's SETIQueue) serves two purposes:

To buffer input and output data, allowing hosts to work for long periods without connecting to the Internet, or when the project's servers are down.
To support hosts that are not connected to the Internet.

BOINC's high/low water mark scheme performs the first function. The second function would be hard to do; the proxy server would have to parse the XML descriptions of workunits and results, and would interact with data servers.