This paper compares and analyzes 10 heuristics to solve the fine-grained data replication problem over the Internet. In fine-grained replication, frequently accessed data objects (as opposed to the entire website contents) are replicated onto a set of selected sites so as to minimize the average access time perceived by the end users. The paper presents a unified cost model that captures the minimization of the total object transfer cost in the system, which in turn leads to effective utilization of storage space, replica consistency, fault-tolerance, and load-balancing. The set of heuristics include six A-Star based algorithms, two bin packing algorithms, one greedy and one genetic algorithm. The heuristics are extensively simulated and compared using an experimental test-bed that closely mimics the Internet infrastructure and user access patterns. GT-ITM and Inet topology generators are used to obtain 80 well-defined network topologies based on flat, link distance, power-law and hierarchical transit-stub models. The user access patterns are derived from real access logs collected at the websites of Soccer World Cup 1998 and NASA Kennedy Space Center. The heuristics are evaluated by analyzing the communication cost incurred due to object transfers under the variance of server capacity, object size, read access, write access, number of objects and sites. The main benefit of this study is to facilitate readers with the choice of algorithms that guarantee fast or optimal or both types of solutions. This allows the selection of a particular algorithm to be used in a given scenario.
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Comparison and Analysis of Ten Static Heuristics-based Internet Data Replication Techniques
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
Computer Science