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In this paper, we explore a new form of dissemination that arises in distributed, mission-critical applications called Flash Dissemination. This involves the rapid dissemination of rich information to a large number of recipients in a very short period of time. A key characteristic of Flash Dissemination is its unpredictability (e.g., natural hazards), but when invoked it must harness all possible resources to ensure timely delivery of information. Additionally, it must scale to a large number of recipients and perform efficiently in highly heterogeneous (data, network) and failure prone environments. We investigate a peer-based approach based on the simple principle of transferring dissemination load to information receivers using foundations from broadcast networks, gossip theory, and random networks. Gossip-based protocols are well known for being stateless, scalable, and fault-tolerant; however, their performance degrades as content size increases, because of the propagation of redundant gossip messages. In this paper, we propose Concurrent Random Expanding Walkers (CREW), a smart gossip protocol designed to maximize the speed of dissemination by transmitting data only as needed, and by exploiting both intra- and internode concurrency. CREW is designed to support both content and network heterogeneity and deal with transmission failures without sacrificing dissemination speed. We implemented CREW on top of a scalable middleware environment that allows for deployment across several platforms and developed optimizations without compromising on the stateless nature of CREW. We evaluated CREW empirically and compared it to optimized implementations of popular gossip and peer-based systems. Our experiments show that CREW significantly outperforms both traditional gossip and current large content dissemination systems while sustaining its performance in the presence of network errors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Internet and information technology have continued developing, the necessity for fast packet processing in computer networks has also grown in importance. All emerging network applications require deep packet classification as well as security-related processing and they should be run at line rates. Hence, network speed and the complexity of network applications will continue increasing and future network processors should simultaneously meet two requirements: high performance and high programmability. We will show that the performance of single processors will not be sufficient to support future demands. Instead, we will have to turn to multicore processors, which can exploit the parallelism in network workloads. In this paper, we focus on the cache coherence protocols which are central to the design of multicore-based network processors. We investigate the effects of two main categories of various cache coherence protocols with several network workloads on multicore processors. Our simulation results show that token protocols have a significantly higher performance than directory protocols. With an 8-core configuration, token protocols improves the performance compared to directory protocols by a factor of nearly 4 on average. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Efficient and deadlock-free routing is critical to the performance of networks-on-chip. The effectiveness of any adaptive routing algorithm strongly depends on the underlying selection strategy. When the routing function returns a set of admissible output channels with a cardinality greater than one, a selection function is used to select the output channel to which the packet will be forwarded. In this paper, we present a novel selection strategy that can be coupled with any adaptive routing algorithm. The proposed selection strategy is based on the concept of Neighbors-on-Path, the aim of which is to exploit the situations of indecision occurring when the routing function returns several admissible output channels. The overall objective is to choose the channel that will allow the packet to be routed to its destination along a path that is as free as possible of congested nodes. Performance evaluation is carried out by using a flit-accurate simulator under traffic scenarios generated by both synthetic and real applications. Results obtained show how the proposed selection strategy applied to the Odd-Even routing algorithm yields an improvement in both average delay and saturation point up to 20 percent and 30 percent on average, respectively, with minimal overhead in terms of area occupation. In addition, as a consequence of the improved router efficiency, a positive effect on total energy consumption is also observed under near-congestion packet injection rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Component failures and planned component replacements cause changes in the topology and routing paths supplied by the interconnection network of a parallel processor system over time. Such changes may require the network to be reconfigured such that the existing routing function is replaced by one that enables packets to reach their intended destinations amid the changes. Efficient reconfiguration methods are desired which allow the network to function uninterruptedly over the course of the reconfiguration process while remaining free from deadlocking behavior. In this paper, we propose, evaluate, and prove the deadlock freedom of a new network reconfiguration protocol that overlaps various phases of "static" reconfiguration processes traditionally used in commercial and research systems to provide performance efficiency on par with that of recently proposed "dynamic" reconfiguration processes but without their complexity. Simulation results show that the proposed Overlapping Static Reconfiguration protocol can reduce reconfiguration time by up to 50 percent, reduce packet latency by several orders of magnitude, reduce packet dropping by an order of magnitude, and provide unhalted packet injection as compared to traditional static reconfiguration while allowing network throughput similar to dynamic reconfiguration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Designing protocols for solving the consensus problem faces new challenges in mobile computing environments. Among others, how we can achieve message efficiency for saving resource consumption has been the focus of research. In this paper, we present the HC protocol, a message efficient consensus protocol for MANETs. We consider the widely used system model where the hosts fail by crashes and the system is equipped with Chandra-Toueg's unreliable failure detectors. Unlike existing consensus protocols, the HC protocol uses a two-layer hierarchy based on clusters to achieve message efficiency. The messages from and to the hosts in the same cluster are merged so as to reduce the message cost. However, adding such a hierarchy is not trivial. Due to host movements and failures, the hierarchy changes from time to time and this may cause message loss. In designing HC, we also propose methods to handle such message losses. Extensive simulations have been carried out to evaluate and compare the performance of the HC protocol and similar protocols in a MANET environment. Simulation results show that, in most cases, our protocol can significantly reduce both the message cost and time cost. With increases in the system scale or the percentage of faulty hosts, the advantage of our protocol becomes more obvious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self-organization is critical for a distributed wireless sensor network due to the spontaneous and random deployment of a large number of sensor nodes over a remote area. Such a network is often characterized by its abilities to form an organizational structure without much centralized intervention. An important design goal for a smart sensor network is to be able have an energy- efficient, self-organized configuration of sensor nodes that can scan, detect, and track targets of interest in a distributed manner. In this paper, we propose a novel self-organization protocol and describe other relevant, indigenous building blocks that can be combined to build integrated surveillance applications for self-organized sensor networks. Experiments in both simulated and real-world platforms indicate that this protocol can be useful for tracking targets that follow a predictable course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A causal broadcast protocol was proposed earlier in [1]. Two extensions of the protocol were also proposed in order to improve its throughput and bandwidth utilization. In this paper, we show that both extensions are not live, i.e., there may be execution patterns in which processes stop delivering messages. We also show that the algorithm for the second extension does not satisfy the requirements on which its correctness was established. Finally, we provide fixed versions of both extensions and prove their correctness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a generic framework for distributed broadcasting in ad hoc wireless networks. The approach is based on selecting a small subset of nodes to form a forward node set to carry out a broadcast process. The status of each node, forward or nonforward, is determined either by the node itself or by other nodes. Node status can be determined at different snapshots of network state along time (called views) without causing problems in broadcast coverage. Therefore, the forward node set can be constructed and maintained through either a proactive process (i.e., "up-to-date") before the broadcast process or a reactive process (i.e., "on-the- fly") during the broadcast process. A sufficient condition, called coverage condition, is given for a node to take the nonforward status. Such a condition can be easily checked locally around the node. Several existing broadcast algorithms can be viewed as special cases of the generic framework with k-hop neighborhood information. A comprehensive comparison among existing algorithms is conducted. Simulation results show that new algorithms, which are more efficient than existing ones, can be derived from the generic framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposes an extended fault-tolerant link-state routing protocol in the Internet. Efficient handling of a bidirectional link fault; Bidirectional restoration paths; Desirable properties of the proposed extended routing protocol; Simulation study to compare traditional link-state protocol, source-tree protocol, unidirectional restoration path protocol and proposed bidirectional restoration path protocol.

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of the replication framework of Deno, a decentralized, peer-to-peer object-replication system targeted for weakly connected environments. Deno uses weighted voting for availability and pair-wise, epidemic information flow for flexibility. This combination allows the protocols to operate with less than full connectivity, to easily adapt to changes in group membership, and to make few assumptions about the underlying network topology. We present two versions of Deno's protocol that differ in the consistency levels they support. We also propose security extensions to handle a class of malicious actions that involve misrepresentation of protocol information. Deno has been implemented and runs on top of Linux and Win32 platforms. We use the Deno prototype to characterize the performance of the Deno protocols and extensions. Our study reveals several interesting results that provide fundamental insight into the benefits of decentralization and the mechanics of epidemic protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a SuperGrid protocol proposed that performs load balancing for small number of items. Analytical expressions of the availability and load of the protocol; Comparison of the technique and method used in the study.

This article presents a response by the author to the comments made on his article "A Positive Acknowledgment Protocol for Causal Broadcasting," published in December 1998 issue of the journal "IEEE Transactions on Computers. In fact, the hard problem attacked was how to get bounded vector clocks in the context of causal broadcasting. The second problem attacked has been to devise the relation between the width of the causal window and the use of credits in a protocol which allows more concurrency at the expenses of wider causal windows. Protocol variants presented in the article were therefore marginal in a broader perspective, as solutions of the previous problems, namely, the dentification and the implementation of the sliding causal window mechanism, actually represent the basic building block of any variant, masking the complexity of the hard problem.