A cooperative game theoretical replica placement technique

Creating replicas of frequently accessed data objects across a read intensive network can lead to reduced communication cost and end-user response time. On the contrary, data replication in the presence of writes incurs extra cost due to multiple updates. The selection of data objects and servers requires solving a constraint optimization problem, which is NP-complete in general. A majority of the current state-of-the-art replica placement techniques suffer from high computational complexity issues. To circumvent such issues, we propose a cooperative game theoretical technique in which the servers (players) in the system collectively deliberate to converge at a replica schema that is beneficial to the system as a whole. In particular we make use of the Aumann-Shapley mechanism of cooperative game theory to propose an effective replica placement technique that yields good solutions when the system is very heavily loaded. Experimental comparisons are made against: (1) branch and bound, (2) greedy, (3) genetic, (4) Dutch auction, and (5) English auction. As demonstrated by the experimental results, the proposed technique maintains superior solution quality in terms of lower communication cost and reduced execution time.

[1]  I. G. Nidekker,et al.  Selected applications of non-linear programming: J. Bracken and G. P. McCormick, John Wiley, New York — London — Sydney — Toronto. XII + 110 pp., 84 sh. 1968☆ , 1969 .

[2]  Lixia Zhang,et al.  On the placement of Internet instrumentation , 2000, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2000. Conference on Computer Communications. Nineteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies (Cat. No.00CH37064).

[3]  Wesley W. Chu,et al.  Optimal File Allocation in a Multiple Computer System , 1969, IEEE Transactions on Computers.

[4]  N. Ireland,et al.  The co-operative game theory of the firm , 1984 .

[5]  Ellen W. Zegura,et al.  A quantitative comparison of graph-based models for Internet topology , 1997, TNET.

[6]  Ishfaq Ahmad,et al.  Static and adaptive distributed data replication using genetic algorithms , 2004, J. Parallel Distributed Comput..

[7]  Martin Arlitt,et al.  Workload Characterization of the 1998 World Cup Web Site , 1999 .

[8]  Ishfaq Ahmad,et al.  A powerful direct mechanism for optimal WWW content replication , 2005, 19th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium.

[9]  L. Shapley,et al.  Values of Non-Atomic Games , 1974 .

[10]  S. L. Hakimi,et al.  Optimum Locations of Switching Centers and the Absolute Centers and Medians of a Graph , 1964 .

[11]  Kapali P. Eswaran.  Placement of Records in a File and File Allocation in a Computer , 1974, IFIP Congress.

[12]  Laurent Pautet,et al.  GLADE: a framework for building large object-oriented real-time distributed systems , 2000, Proceedings Third IEEE International Symposium on Object-Oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC 2000) (Cat. No. PR00607).

[13]  青木 昌彦,et al.  The co-operative game theory of the firm , 1984 .

[14]  Christos H. Papadimitriou,et al.  Selfish caching in distributed systems: a game-theoretic analysis , 2004, PODC '04.

[15]  Dimitris Papadias,et al.  An overview of data replication on the Internet , 2002, Proceedings International Symposium on Parallel Architectures, Algorithms and Networks. I-SPAN'02.

[16]  Marshall L. Fisher,et al.  The Lagrangian Relaxation Method for Solving Integer Programming Problems , 2004, Manag. Sci..

[17]  D. E. Campbell.  Resource Allocation Mechanisms , 1987 .

[18]  Martin Arlitt,et al.  A workload characterization study of the 1998 World Cup Web site , 2000, IEEE Netw..

[19]  William W. Sharkey,et al.  Cost allocation , 1996 .

[20]  Ishfaq Ahmad,et al.  Heuristics-Based Replication Schemas for Fast Information Retrieval over the Internet , 2004, PDCS.

[21]  Nikolaos Laoutaris,et al.  Local Utility Aware Content Replication , 2005, NETWORKING.

[22]  Lili Qiu,et al.  On the placement of Web server replicas , 2001, Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2001. Conference on Computer Communications. Twentieth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Society (Cat. No.01CH37213).

[23]  Magnus Karlsson,et al.  Do We Need Replica Placement Algorithms in Content Delivery Networks , 2002 .

[24]  R. G. Casey,et al.  Allocation of copies of a file in an information network , 1899, AFIPS '72 (Spring).

[25]  Bo Li,et al.  On the optimal placement of web proxies in the Internet , 1999, IEEE INFOCOM '99. Conference on Computer Communications. Proceedings. Eighteenth Annual Joint Conference of the IEEE Computer and Communications Societies. The Future is Now (Cat. No.99CH36320).

[26]  J. Spruce Riordon,et al.  Optimal allocation of resources in distributed information networks , 1976, TODS.