VICINITY: A pinch of randomness brings out the structure

Abstract

Overlay networks are central to the operation of large-scale decentralized applications, be it Internet-scale P2P systems deployed in the wild or cloud applications running in a controlled - albeit large-scale - environment. A number of custom solutions exist for individual applications, each employing a tailor-made mechanism to build and maintain its specific structure. This paper addresses the role of randomness in developing and maintaining such structures. Taking VICINITY, a generic overlay management framework based on self-organization, we explore tradeoffs between deterministic and probabilistic decision-making for structuring overlays. We come to the conclusion that a pinch of randomness may even be needed in overlay construction, but also that much randomness or randomness alone is not good either. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2013.