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The Computer Journal Advance Access published online on March 31, 2008
The Computer Journal, doi:10.1093/comjnl/bxn017
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Computer Society.All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Aggregation Dynamics in Overlay Networks and Their Implications for Self-Organized Distributed Applications

Fabrice Saffre1,*, Richard Tateson1, José Halloy2, Mark Shackleton1 and Jean Louis Deneubourg2

1 BT Group CTO, Pervasive ICT Research Centre, Adastral Park, Orion 1st floor pp 12, Martlesham Heath IP5 3RE, UK
2 Université libre de Bruxelles, Service d'Ecologie Sociale and Centre for Nonlinear Phenomena and Complex Systems, Campus de la Plaine CP 231, Blvd. du Triomphe, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium

* Corresponding author: fabrice.saffre{at}bt.com

Received 13 October 2006; revised 25 February 2008

In this paper, we investigate the global self-aggregation dynamics arising from local decision-based rewiring of an overlay network, used as an abstraction for an autonomic service-oriented architecture. We measure the ability of a selected set of local rules to foster self-organization of what is originally a random graph into a structured network. Scalability issues with respect to the key parameters of system size and diversity are extensively discussed. Conflicting goals are introduced, in the form of a population of nodes actively seeking to acquire neighbours of a type different from their own, resulting in decreased local homogeneity. We show that a ‘secondary’ self-organization process ensues, whereby nodes spontaneously cluster according to their implicit objective. Finally, we introduce dynamic goals by making the preferred neighbour type a function of the local characteristics of a simulated workload. We demonstrate that in this context, an overlay rewiring process based purely on local decisions and interactions can result in efficient load-balancing without central planning. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the design of future distributed applications, the likely influence of other factors and of extreme parameter values on the ability of the system to self-organize and the potential improvements to our framework.

Key Words: self-organization • autonomic systems • overlay networks • distributed applications • component aggregation


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