Dependability in Aggregation by Averaging

Abstract. Aggregation is an important building block of modern distributed applications, allowing the determination of meaningful properties (e.g. network size, total storage capacity, average load, majorities, etc.) that are used to direct the execution of the system. In the recent years, several approaches have been proposed to compute aggregation functions on distributed settings, exhibiting different characteristics, in terms of accuracy, time and communication complexity. However, the majority of the existing aggregation algorithms exhibit relevant dependability issues, when prospecting their use in real application environments. In this paper, we reveal some dependability issues of aggregation algorithms based on iterative averaging techniques, giving some directions to solve them. This class of algorithms is considered robust (when compared to common tree-based approaches), being independent from the used routing topology and providing an aggregation result at all nodes. However...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Paulo Jesus, Carlos Baquero, Paulo Sérgio Almeida
• Keywords: Algorithms, CORR 2010, Dependability Issues, Education, Modern Distributed Applications