THE COLUMBIA HOTSPOT RESCUE SERVICE: A RESEARCH PLAN

The technical reports in this series are considered to be semi-formal. The ideas expressed are solely those of the authors, and questions about the content should be directed to them. 1 Introduction Internet performance is unpredictable, and users often find the level of service inadequate. We expect this problem to worsen as the Internet continues to grow, both in the number of users and in the stringency of the requirements of new applications. Intolerable levels of service stem from a lack of sufficient resources being targeted to locations where service quality is lacking. In a system as complex as the Internet, the insufficient resource can be of many types. It may be a server with insufficient processing power to handle a large load of requests. It may be a router at the edge of the network that is forced to carry a heavy load to or from its local area network. It may be a router in the middle of the network that must carry a large load, perhaps connecting a set of ISPs, such that upgrading its performance does not directly increase any company's profits. Lastly, it may be an attacker intentionally trying to bring down a portion of the network. Commonly, the periods of insufficiency are short-lived. In other words, the resources allocated within a network to support a service are sufficient most of the time, but every so often and quite suddenly, there may be a sharp increase in demand, and the resource quickly becomes overwhelmed. Such an event is called a network hotspot [1, 2]. There are several remedies currently available to deal with network hotspots. The easiest, most common solution is to make do with the network as is and deal ad hoc with the unpredictable level of service. A second remedy that works in theory is to " build a better network " in which hot spots do not occur. Here, each network and server component must be provisioned with enough resources to handle the maximum possible short-term overload. However, such overprovisioning is extremely costly, making it an infeasible solution for the majority of network servers and users. Another remedy is for companies to offer content delivery services, such as caching or access to additional network bandwidth [3]. The content delivery company deploys servers throughout the network, and then profits when those wishing to provide information efficiently are forced to pay for access to …