Computer Science

Graduate Research Forum Details

PopCorn: Placement of Point-of-Presence Applicationsin Open Peer-to-Peer Environment

Abstract

Point-of-Presence (PoP) application is one class of applications need to disperse a set of agent tasks throughout the Internet to collect and process data. Those agent tasks are usually not CPU-intensive. They may work independently, or may collaborate with each other by aggregating and exchanging information. Data collected by the agent tasks may be shipped back to the PoP depository servers for further analysis. Examples of PoP application include security update servers, network traffic monitors, distributed game testing, etc. PopCorn protocol aims to evenly distribute a certain number of PoP agents to the overlay, which is one of the most critical requirements of PoP applications. All peers will run the protocol individually only using local information of their neighbors, without knowing the global topology of the overlay network. The study of placement of Point-of-Presence applications is part of the project Cluster Computing on the Fly (CCOF), directed by Professor Virginia Lo. CCOF supports the formation of cycle sharing communities by aggregating machines on the edge of the Internet into a shared resource pool, providing on-demand cycles to ordinary users. All peers willing to run PoP applications will join an overlay network to form a cycle sharing community. They need to provide detailed information about how much computation resource they can offer and the location related information. When a user needs to deploy a PoP application, PopCorn placement protocol will be run to use information about application requirements and resources provided by hosts to find the most suitable hosts for PoP tasks.