Title :
Nomadic Service Assignment
Author :
Bortnikov, Edward ; Cidon, Israel ; Keidar, Idit
Author_Institution :
Technion - Israel Inst. of Technol., Haifa
Abstract :
We consider the problem of dynamically assigning application sessions of mobile users or user groups to service points. Such assignments must balance the trade-off between two conflicting goals. On the one hand, we would like to connect a user to the closest server in order to reduce network costs and service latencies. On the other hand, we would like to minimize the number of costly session migrations, or handoffs, between service points. We tackle this problem using two approaches. First, we employ algorithmic online optimization to obtain algorithms whose worst-case performance is within a factor of the optimal. Next, we extend them with opportunistic heuristics that achieve near-optimal practical average performance and scalability. We conduct case studies of two settings where such algorithms are required: wireless mesh networks with mobile users and wide-area groupware applications with or without mobility.
Keywords :
groupware; mobile communication; mobile computing; network servers; algorithmic online optimization; application session dynamic assignment; distributed network; handoff reduction; mobile communication systems; network cost reduction; nomadic service assignment; online computation; service latency reduction; session migration reduction; wide-area groupware application; wireless mesh network; Access protocols; Collaborative software; Collaborative work; Costs; Delay; Internet; Network servers; Quality of service; Telecommunication traffic; Wireless mesh networks; Mobile communication systems; distributed networks.; online computation;
Journal_Title :
Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on
DOI :
10.1109/TMC.2007.1043