Dynamic Composition of Service Specific Overlay Networks

Content delivery through service overlay networks has gained popularity due to the overlays’ abilities to provide effective and reliable services. Inefficiencies of one-to-one matching of user requirements to a single service have given rise to service composition. Customized media delivery can be achieved through dynamic compositions of Service Specific Overlay Networks (SSONs). However, the presence of SSONs in dynamic environments raises the possibility of unexpected failures and quality degradations. Thus constructing, managing, and repairing corrupted service paths are challenging dilemmas. This thesis investigates the problem of autonomous SSON construction and management and identifies the drawbacks of current approaches. A novel multi-layered, autonomous, self-adaptive framework for constructing SSONs is presented. The framework includes a Hybrid Service Overlay Network layer (H-SON). The H-SON is a dynamic hybrid overlay dedicated to service composition for multimedia delivery in dynamic networks. Node placement in the overlay depends on the node’s stability, types and quality of provided services. Changes in stability and QoS of service nodes are reflected by dynamic re-organizations of the overlay. The H-SON permits fast and efficient searches for component services that meet client functional and quality expectations. Self-managed overlay nodes coordinate their behaviors to formulate a service composition path that meets the client’s requirements. Two approaches are presented in this work. The first illustrates how SSONs are established through dynamically adaptable MS-designed plans. The imprecise nature of nonfunctional service characteristics, such as QoS, is modeled using a fuzzy logic system. Moreover, semantic similarity evaluations enable us to include, in compositions, those services whose operations match, semantically, the requirements of the composition plan. Plan-based composition solutions restrict service discovery to defined abstract models. Our second composition approach introduces a semantic similarity and nearness SSON composition method. The objective is to free service nodes from the adherence to restrictive composition plans. The presented work illustrates a service composition solution that semantically advances service composition paths towards meeting users’ needs with each service hop while simultaneously guaranteeing user-acceptable QoS levels. Simulation results showcase the effectiveness of the presented work. Gathered results validate the success of our service composition methods while meeting user requirements.