Overlay networks – implementation by specification

  • Authors:
  • Stefan Behnel;Alejandro Buchmann

  • Affiliations:
  • Databases and Distributed Systems Group, Darmstadt University of Technology (TUD), Germany;Databases and Distributed Systems Group, Darmstadt University of Technology (TUD), Germany

  • Venue:
  • Middleware'05 Proceedings of the ACM/IFIP/USENIX 6th international conference on Middleware
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

Implementing overlay software is non-trivial. Current projects build overlays or intermediate frameworks on top of low-level networking abstractions. This leaves implementing the topologies, their maintenance and optimisation strategies, and the routing to the developer. We take a novel approach to overlay implementation by modelling topologies as a distributed database. This approach, named “Node Views”, abstracts from low-level issues like I/O and message handling. Instead, it moves ranking nodes and selecting neighbours into the heart of the overlay software development process. It decouples maintenance components in overlay software and allows implementing them in a generic, configurable way for pluggable integration in frameworks.