Improved single-round protocols for remote file synchronization

— Given two versions of a file, a current version located on one machine and an outdated version known only to another machine, the remote file synchronization problem is how to update the outdated version over a network with a minimal amount of communication. In particular, when the versions are very similar, the total data transmitted should be significantly smaller than the file size. File synchronization problems arise in many application scenarios such as web site mirroring, file system backup and replication, and web access over slow links. An open source tool for this problem, called rsync and included in many Linux distributions, is widely used in such scenarios. rsync uses a single round of messages between the two machines. While recent research has shown that significant additional savings in bandwidth consumption are possible through the use of optimized multi-round protocols, there are many scenarios where multiple rounds are undesirable. In this paper, we study si...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Utku Irmak, Svilen Mihaylov, Torsten Suel
• Keywords: Communications, INFOCOM 2005, Rsync, Synchronization Problems, file Synchronization