Nomadic Service Assignment.

Authors: Edward Bortnikov, Israel Cidon, and Idit Keidar.

IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC) 6:8, pages 915-928, August 2007.
Previous version, entitled Nomadic Service Points, in IEEE INFOCOM 2006, April 2006.

Abstract:

We consider the novel problem of dynamically assigning application sessions of mobile users or user groups to service points. Such assignments must balance the tradeoff between two conflicting goals. On the one hand, we would like to connect a user to the closest server, in order to reduce network costs and service latencies. On the other hand, we would like to minimize the number of costly session migrations, or handoffs, between service points. We tackle this problem using two methodologies. First, we employ algorithmic online optimization to obtain algorithms whose worst-case performance is within a factor of the optimal. Next, we extend them with opportunistic versions that achieve excellent practical average performance and scalability. We conduct case studies of two settings where such algorithms are required: wireless mesh networks with mobile users, and wide-area groupware applications with or without mobility.

Download:

Preprint of IEEE TMC paper: pdf, pdf.gz.
Preprint of INFOCOM'06 paper: ps, ps.gz, pdf, pdf.gz.
Technical Report CCIT 542, Technion Department of Electrical Engineering, July 2005: ps, ps.gz, pdf, pdf.gz.

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