Location management methods of migratory data resources in ATM networks

In broadband networks such as ArM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks, the dynamic migration of data resources, such as databases and files, has become more powerful and effective than that in conventional networks so far. In environments with migratory data resources, it is necessary to develop a method to manage the location of each resource. In this paper, we discuss the location management of migratory data resources. First, we propose several resource location management methods: some of them are based on conventional methods, and the rest are new methods which make use of the features of ATM networks. Then, we compare the performance of the methods by simulation studies under several system parameters, such as the frequency of accesses and resource migrations, and the scale of the network. Based on the comparisons, we show the optimal location management method for a given system environment. 1 INTRODUCTION The recent development of network technologies such as ATM makes it possible to provide very high-speed data transmission facilities. Such broad bandwidth promotes the development of a large number of multimedia applications It also has a great impact on the technologies of distributed processing. In conventional distributed information environments, the primary factor for performance improvement was the minimization of data volume transmitted in (narrowband) networks. However, in the recent environment, more efficient use of broadband networks is now one of the most important issues for performance improvement. This is partly because, in a broadband network, the propagation delay is "'Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all or" this work tbr personal or classroom use is granted without l'ec provided that copies are not made or dJstribtztcd for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the l]rst page. Copyrights for components ol'this work owned by' others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with crcdit is permitted. To copy otherwise, to republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee." almost equal to that of a conventional network and the transmission delay is very small even for data of huge volume. Thus, it is rather efficient to collectively transmit data of large volume than to transmit data in multiple small fragments. From this viewpoint, the migration of the data resources such as data items and objects is expected to he one of the most useful mechanism in …