Exploiting Synergies between Coexisting Overlays

Abstract

Abstract. Overlay networks have emerged as a powerful paradigm to realise a large range of distributed services. However, as the number of overlays grows and the systems that use them become more interconnected, overlays must increasingly co-exist within the same infrastructure. When this happens, overlays have to compete for limited resources, which causes negative interferences. This paper takes an opposite view, and argues that coexisting overlays may also introduce positive synergies that can be exploited to benefit a distributed system. Unfortunately, and in spite of some pioneering work, this phenomenon is still poorly understood and has yet to be investigated systematically. To address this problem, this paper proposes a principled classification of synergies, and illustrates how it can be used to exploit synergies in a typical overlay platform targeting gossip protocols (GossipKit). We review in detail the risks and benefits of each identified synergy; we present experimental data that validate their added value, and finally discuss the lessons we have learnt from our implementation.

State-of-the-art survey on P2P overlay networks in pervasive computing environments

“…Whereas the efficient resource discovery of structured P2P overlays might be the goal of some applications, the flexible membership supported by unstructured overlays might be preferred by others. This was clearly exhibited by Lin et al (2009) andManiymaran et al (2007), where the key term is that of synergy. Lin et al (2009) in particular explored the different options available for collaboration between overlays and set the theoretical grounds for employing relevant solutions.…”

“…It is evident that there is no panacea in regard to P2P overlays, namely a solution that can be utilized to address the totality of issues pertaining to pervasive networks (Cooper, 2006). In this respect, we can safely assume that multiple overlays will be concurrently operating on top of the same physical network infrastructures, an assumption which is valid and can actually be witnessed in current network deployments (Lin et al, 2009;Maniymaran et al, 2007). A further reason for this is the fact that most P2P overlays are domain-or application-specific, e.g.…”

“…The coexistence of more than one P2P overlay layers over the same underlying networks and its impact on network performance has not received significant research attention to date. Lin et al (2009) experimented with the synergies that arise between coexisting overlays and argued that when carefully designed they can yield significant performance improvements. This work sets the foundations for coexisting overlays by proposing a well-defined classification scheme for potential synergies among such overlays.…”

A coalitional game approach on improving interactions in multiple overlay environments

“…The random peer sampling (RPS) view routing table in the Gossip protocol can be replaced by the leaf set table in the Pastry, while the routing table Pastry can be replaced by the cluster view routing table in the interest-based Gossip protocol. Lin et al [27] analyze different types of synergies, and discuss how they can be used to benefit the performance of a GossipKit system. The synergies between co-existing Gossip overlays are exploited and the benefits are validated.…”

AntOM: Constructing multi-layer overlays for pervasive environments

“…In [11] the effect of using concurrent multiple overlays for routing is explored, highlighting the problems that arise when these layers are not interacting with each other. In this line, [12] experimented with the synergies that arise between coexisting overlays and argued that when carefully designed they can yield significant performance improvements. The potential of combining the benefits of both structured and unstructured P2P overlays are reported in [13], where instances of both overlay types on the same network were employed and their complementary operation was promoted.…”