Heterogeneous Gossip

Abstract. Gossip-based information dissemination protocols are considered easy to deploy, scalable and resilient to network dynamics. Loadbalancing is inherent in these protocols as the dissemination work is evenly spread among all nodes. Yet, large-scale distributed systems are usually heterogeneous with respect to network capabilities such as bandwidth. In practice, a blind load-balancing strategy might significantly hamper the performance of the gossip dissemination. This paper presents HEAP, HEterogeneity-Aware gossip Protocol, where nodes dynamically adapt their contribution to the gossip dissemination according to their bandwidth capabilities. Using a continuous, itself gossip-based, approximation of relative bandwidth capabilities, HEAP dynamically leverages the most capable nodes by increasing their fanout, while decreasing by the same proportion those of less capable nodes. HEAP preserves the simplicity and proactive (churn adaptation) nature of gossip, while significantly i...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: MIDDLEWARE
• Authors: Davide Frey, Rachid Guerraoui, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Boris Koldehofe, Martin Mogensen, Maxime Monod, Vivien Quéma
• Keywords: Bandwidth Capabilities, Capable Nodes, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Gossip Dissemination, MIDDLEWARE 2009