Load sharing using multicasting

The authors examine approaches to load sharing based on multicasting in a local area network environment. The results show that multicasting is an efficient method for locating lightly-loaded nodes with better response time and fewer messages to busy nodes, compared to previously proposed policies. The improved performance of the multicasting policies results from nodes maintaining state information by joining and leaving multicast groups, rather than probing or exchanging information between machines that may already be busy.<<ETX>>