Automatic Selection of Nearby Web Servers
John Heidemann and Vikram Visweswaraiah
USC/Information Sciences Institute
Citation
John Heidemann and Vikram Visweswaraiah. Automatic Selection of Nearby Web Servers. Technical Report 98-688. University of Southern California Computer Science Department. [PDF] [alt PDF]
Abstract
Performance of global services such as the world-wide web can be improved by physically distributed replicas. Most replicated systems today request users to select manually a nearby replica (typically from a list of sites), yet users often are not willing or able to make an informed choice. This paper describes an approach to automatic replica selection which works without change to existing web clients and web and FTP servers. We describe the assumptions behind our approach and propose several metrics for estimation of network distance. We examine the feasibility behind this approach and compare the time required for replica-selection by each algorithm. Finally, we describe a small change to HTTP that would improve replica selection transparency.Bibtex Citation
@techreport{Heidemann98g,
author = {Heidemann, John and Visweswaraiah, Vikram},
title = {Automatic Selection of Nearby Web Servers},
institution = {University of Southern California Computer Science Department},
year = {1998},
sortdate = {1998-12-01},
project = {ant},
jsubject = {www},
number = {98-688},
month = dec,
jlocation = {johnh: folder: xxx},
keywords = {replica selection, http},
url = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann98g.html},
psurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann98g.ps.gz},
pdfurl = {https://ant.isi.edu/%7ejohnh/PAPERS/Heidemann98g.pdf},
otherurl = {ftp://usc.edu/pub/csinfo/tech-reports/papers/98-688.ps.Z},
copyrightholder = {authors},
myorganization = {USC/Information Sciences Institute}
}