A utility-aware middleware architecture for decentralized group communication applications

Abstract

Although unstructured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks provide economical platforms for supporting group communication applications, their ad-hoc nature poses significant challenges to the performance of the group communication services. This paper presents the design and implementation of GroupCast - a utility-aware middleware architecture for scalable and efficient P2P group communications. The GroupCast design is characterized by two unique features. First, we present a utility function for quantifying the role of unicast links in enhancing the scalability and efficiency of the group communication applications. Second, we develop a utility-aware distributed spanning tree construction algorithm for efficiently propagating group communication messages. It dynamically creates and maintains the group communication channels by optimizing the utility value of the group communication spanning trees. In addition, we also outline a utility-based overlay management protocol for constructing and maintaining low-diameter overlay networks. Our experiments show that the GroupCast system can improve the scalability of wide-area group communication services by one to two orders of magnitude. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2007.