Proxy-based Grid Information Dissemination

Resource scheduling in large-scale, volatile desktop grids is challenging because resource state is both dynamic and eclectic. Matching available resources with requests is not always possible with existing approaches. Partial dissemination protocols, such as gossiping, may provide efficient schedules when resource requesters are located near providers that can meet their needs. However, when requesters are distant from available resources, regular information dissemination techniques can waste communication bandwidth with futile messages. Thus, it may be advantageous to attempt to advertise to select remote regions of the grid, without necessarily also going through all intermediate nodes. This paper proposes dissemination proxies to increase coverage footprints and reduce dissemination overhead. We incorporate selecting and adjusting the amount of proxy nodes into an adaptive dissemination algorithm, and show that dissemination proxies are able to reduce dissemination overhead, and handle available resource distribution scenarios where regular information dissemination approaches may not produce efficient protocols. We also report initial results that indicate that randomly selecting nodes to serve as proxies can perform as well as strategies that select seemingly better-qualified proxies.