Abstract. The success of Internet telephony services like Skype illustrates the feasibility of utilizing unstructured Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks as an economical platform for supporting group communication applications. However, the ad-hoc nature of these networks poses significant challenges to the efficiency and scalability of the group communication services. This paper presents the design and implementation of GroupCast − a utility-aware middleware architecture for scalable and efficient P2P group communications. The GroupCast design is characterized by three unique features. First, we present the utility function for quantifying the role of unicast links in enhancing the scalability and efficiency of the group communication applications. This utility function provides a careful combination of the two most important performance factors, namely relative network locations and resource capabilities of the end hosts. Second, we develop a utility-aware distributed spanning tree construction algorithm for efficiently propagating group communication messages. It dynamically creates and maintains the group communication channels by optimizing the utility value of the group communication spanning trees. Third, we propose a utility-based overlay management protocol for constructing and maintaining low-diameter overlay networks to further enhance the performance of the group communication services. We evaluate the effectiveness of the GroupCast middleware architecture through analytical and experimental analysis of the costs and benefits of the proposed techniques. Our experimental results show that the GroupCast system can improve the scalability of wide-area group communication services by one to two orders of magnitude.
REF improves the efficiency of group communication.
A Utility-Aware Middleware Architecture for Decentralized Group Communication Applications
Middleware
Computer Science