Building scalable and adaptive network services
Adolfo Rodriguez, Amin M. Vahdat · 2003
The lack of infrastructural functionality in IP-based networks has led to the creation of many overlay network algorithms where application-level nodes self-organize, forming an overlay atop the underlying IP substrate. The process of overlay design, development, and evaluation is plagued by a number of challenges. Current overlay algorithms are designed toward specific application requirements and tend to either be one-dimensional, optimizing for a single performance metric while sacrificing others, or not scalable to large numbers of nodes. Development of overlays is tedious, complex, and redundant since these algorithms make use of similar system and network functionality. Disparate evaluation techniques expose implementation artifacts rather than differences in algorithmic principles, thus leading to unfair and inconsistent evaluation. This dissertation presents a collection of overlay services geared at simplify-ing the creation of scalable and adaptive overlay networks. First, RanSub is a scalable mechanism for providing overlay nodes with random subsets of global