A simulation based analysis of naming schemes for distributed systems

As the internet grows in size and number of users, the way in which resources are identified and accessed becomes increasingly important. This implies the need for an efficient naming service. A naming service is a facility that enables clients to name objects, and subsequently use these names to locate these objects. Developing a naming facility and choosing the naming conventions involves a tradeoff between performance, user friendliness, object mobility, availability of naming information, individual autonomy, storage space requirement, and the cost of maintaining data consistency. The purpose of this paper is to analyze three different naming schemes in a wide area network, and study the impact of design parameters such as transmission capabilities, cache hit ratio, and servers’ rate of failure on the performance of a naming facility.