Resource allocation in a client/server hybrid network for virtual world environments

The creation of a virtual world environment (VWE) has significant costs, such as maintenance of server rooms, server administration, and customer service. The initial development cost is not the only factor that needs to be considered; factors such as the popularity of a VWE and unexpected technical problems during and after the launch can affect the final cost and success of a VWE. The capacity of servers in a client/server VWE is hard to scale and cannot adjust quickly to peaks in demand while maintaining the required response time. To handle these peaks in demand, we propose to employ users’ computers as secondary servers. The introduction of users’ computers as secondary servers allows the performance of the VWE to support an increase in users. In this study, we develop and implement five static heuristics to implement a secondary server scheme that reduces the time taken to compute the state of the VWE. The number of heterogeneous secondary servers, conversion of a player ...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: IPPS
• Authors: Luis Diego Briceno, Howard Jay Siegel, Anthony A. Maciejewski, Ye Hong, Brad Lock, Mohammad Nayeem Teli, Fadi Wedyan, Charles Panaccione, Chen Zhang
• Keywords: Distributed And Parallel Computing, Initial Development Cost, IPPS 2008, Secondary Servers, Virtual World Environment