A group-formation service
Kenneth L. Calvert, James N. Griffioen, Amit Sehgal · 2008
Distributed applications often need to assign participants to groups to make the applications scalable and efficient. However, every application uses different metrics and policies to achieve group formation. Hence, applications design and implement their own custom solutions to solve their grouping problems. In this thesis we present the design, implementation and evaluation of a generic, scalable, and efficient distributed grouping service. The service provides a programming interface that allows distributed applications to group participants according to both application and network data. The grouping service is both scalable and efficient. Solutions are presented for an active network environment as well as the current Internet. We finally present the simulation and analysis of the costs and benefits of the group formation service. Keywords. Grouping, Overlays, Delay estimation, Concast, ESP.