Architecture and Performance of Application Networking in Pervasive Content Delivery

This paper proposes Application Networking (App.Net) architecture that enables Web server to deploy intermediate response with associated service logic to edge proxies in form of a workflow. The recipient proxy is allowed to instantiate the workflow using local services or by downloading mobile applications from remote sites. The final response is the output from the workflow execution fed with the intermediate result. In this paper, we defined a workflow modulation method to represent service logic and manipulate it in uniform operations. An App.Net caching method is designed to cache intermediate results as well as final response presentations. According to cost model measuring the bandwidth usage, we designed workflow placement algorithms to deploy intermediate response objects to the proxy in optimal or greedy ways. Finally, we developed an App.Net prototype and implemented a wide range of applications existed in the Web. Our simulation results show that using workflow and dynamic application deployment, App.Net can achieve better performance than conventional methods.