Optimistic On-demand Cache Replication for Service Discovery in Wireless Mesh Networks

Current approaches for service discovery in Mobile ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) are optimized for highly dynamic environments. These approaches do not scale in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) which are intended for long-time usage. Service discovery approaches for static wired networks are also not applicable. We present a scalable two-layered approach for service discovery in WMNs where clients communicate with anycast with the best Service Cache (SC) to register or query for services. SCs do not replicate the client registrations immediately; instead they push their information to all other SCs on-demand only. To avoid severe duplicate information dissemination, appropriate cache replication techniques like backoff and send control mechanisms are presented. Finally, the measurements performed in the department´s wireless mesh testbed are discussed with results and conclusions.