Migrating Autonomous Objects in a WAN Environment
download complete text (postscript, 180k)
Authors:
- Natalija Krivokapic
- Markus Islinger
- Alfons Kemper
Abstract:
- Along with the fast progress the interconnection of computer systems
makes the need for enterprise-wide distributed solutions grows. These
systems have to support hundreds or even thousands of sites located
all over the world. The distances between the sites will impose high
communication costs on distributed activities thus significantly
increasing their response times. This problem can be alleviated
through migrating objects to the sites where they are needed. However,
migration in such systems cannot be managed globally. Therefore, we
present a migration protocol for (autonomous) objects which enables
them autonomously to decide whether or not and which site to migrate
to, thus making the system self-tuning. We also present two migration
strategies objects can use to derive their migration decisions. The
first one finds the optimal placement for an object while the second
strategy in some cases returns a sub-optimal location but induces lower
computation costs. The two strategies are evaluated through benchmarks
in a distributed system of autonomous objects. The experiments show a
significant decrease in communication costs when migration is employed.
Last modified: Wed Nov 10 12:02:26 MET 1999