An antibody network inspired evolutionary framework for distributed object computing

In order to meet the increasing scale and users requirements for the distributed object computing (DOC) systems, their infrastructures are highly desirable to be redesigned. Based on the principles of immune system and the evolution mechanisms learned from an antibody network model, a novel evolutionary framework for DOC (E-DOC) is proposed. The antibody network model as well as the evolution process including clonal proliferation, immune elimination, and immune memory is studied. Then, E-DOC framework based on the antibody network is proposed, whose simulation platform is designed and implemented. On the platform, the evolutionary features are studied by: (1) diversity and stability of antibodies and genotypes, (2) detection and elimination of antigens, (3) effect of immune memory, and (4) tendency of eliminated and stimulated antigens. The experiment results show that the proposed framework can achieve the evolution ability and the promising performance, which are critical to DOC systems. E-DOC is extendable for the future design of distributed object middleware, such as WebSphere Application Server and BEA WebLogic Application Server.     

A clustering-based prefetching scheme on a Web cache environment

Web prefetching is an attractive solution to reduce the network resources consumed by Web services as well as the access latencies perceived by Web users. Unlike Web caching, which exploits the temporal locality, Web prefetching utilizes the spatial locality of Web objects. Specifically, Web prefetching fetches objects that are likely to be accessed in the near future and stores them in advance. In this context, a sophisticated combination of these two techniques may cause significant improvements on the performance of the Web infrastructure. Considering that there have been several caching policies proposed in the past, the challenge is to extend them by using data mining techniques. In this paper, we present a clustering-based prefetching scheme where a graph-based clustering algorithm identifies clusters of “correlated” Web pages based on the users’ access patterns. This scheme can be integrated easily into a Web proxy server, improving its performance. Through a simulation environment, using a real data set, we show that the proposed integrated framework is robust and effective in improving the performance of the Web caching environment.     

Integrating Web caching and Web prefetching in client-side proxies

Web caching and Web prefetching are two important techniques used to reduce the noticeable response time perceived by users. Note that by integrating Web caching and Web prefetching, these two techniques can complement each other since the Web caching technique exploits the temporal locality, whereas Web prefetching technique utilizes the spatial locality of Web objects. However, without circumspect design, the integration of these two techniques might cause significant performance degradation to each other. In view of this, we propose in this paper an innovative cache replacement algorithm, which not only considers the caching effect in the Web environment, but also evaluates the prefetching rules provided by various prefetching schemes. Specifically, we formulate a normalized profit function to evaluate the profit from caching an object (i.e., either a nonimplied object or an implied object according to some prefetching rule). Based on the normalized profit function devised, we devise an innovative Web cache replacement algorithm, referred to as Algorithm IWCP (standing for the Integration of Web Caching and Prefetching). Using an event-driven simulation, we evaluate the performance of Algorithm IWCP under several circumstances. The experimental results show that Algorithm IWCP consistently outperforms the companion schemes in various performance metrics.     

Performance analysis of a client-side caching/prefetching system for Web traffic

Network congestion remains one of the main barriers to the continuing success of the Internet. For Web users, congestion manifests itself in unacceptably long response times. One possible remedy to the latency problem is to use caching at the client, at the proxy server, or within the Internet. However, Web documents are becoming increasingly dynamic (i.e., have short lifetimes), which limits the potential benefit of caching. The performance of a Web caching system can be dramatically increased by integrating document prefetching (a.k.a. “proactive caching”) into its design. Although prefetching reduces the response time of a requested document, it also increases the network load, as some documents will be unnecessarily prefetched (due to the imprecision in the prediction algorithm). In this study, we analyze the confluence of the two effects through a tractable mathematical model that enables us to establish the conditions under which prefetching reduces the average response time of a requested document. The model accommodates both passive client and proxy caching along with prefetching. Our analysis is used to dynamically compute the “optimal” number of documents to prefetch in the subsequent client’s idle (think) period. In general, this optimal number is determined through a simple numerical procedure. Closed-form expressions for this optimal number are obtained for special yet important cases. We discuss how our analytical results can be used to optimally adapt the parameters of an actual prefetching system. Simulations are used to validate our analysis and study the interactions among various system parameters.     

Integrating Web Prefetching and Caching Using Prediction Models

Web caching and prefetching have been studied in the past separately. In this paper, we present an integrated architecture for Web object caching and prefetching. Our goal is to design a prefetching system that can work with an existing Web caching system in a seamless manner. In this integrated architecture, a certain amount of caching space is reserved for prefetching. To empower the prefetching engine, a Web-object prediction model is built by mining the frequent paths from past Web log data. We show that the integrated architecture improves the performance over Web caching alone, and present our analysis on the tradeoff between the reduced latency and the potential increase in network load.     

一种基于查询特性的查询结果缓存与预取方法

针对搜索引擎查询结果缓存与预取问题,该文提出了一种基于查询特性的搜索引擎查询结果缓存与预取方法,该方法包括用来指导预取的查询结果页码预测模型和缓存与预取算法框架,用于提高搜索引擎系统性能。通过对国内某著名中文商业搜索引擎的某段时间的用户查询日志分析得出,用户对不同查询返回的查询结果所浏览的页数具有显著的非均衡性,结合该特性设计查询结果页码预测模型来进行预取和分区缓存。在该搜索引擎两个月的大规模真实用户查询日志上的实验结果表明,与传统的方法相比,该方法可以获得3.5%~8.45%的缓存命中率提升。     

Broadcast-Based Spatial Queries

Indexing techniques have been developed for wireless data broadcast environments, in order to conserve the scarce power resources of the mobile clients. However, the use of interleaved index segments in a broadcast cycle increases the average access latency for the clients. In this paper, the broadcast-based spatial query processing methods (BBS) are presented for the location-based services. In the BBS, broadcasted data objects are sorted sequentially based on their locations, and the server broadcasts the location dependent data along with an index segment. Then, a sequential prefetching and caching scheme is designed to reduce the query response time. The performance of this scheme is investigated in relation to various environmental variables, such as the distributions of the data objects, the average speed of the clients and the size of the service area.     

Mistreatment-resilient distributed caching

The distributed partitioning of autonomous, self-aware nodes into cooperative groups, within which scarce resources could be effectively shared for the benefit of the group, is increasingly emerging as a hallmark of many newly-proposed overlay and peer-to-peer applications. Distributed caching protocols in which group members cooperate to satisfy local requests for objects is a canonical example of such applications. In recent work of ours we identified mistreatment as a potentially serious problem for nodes participating in such cooperative caching arrangements. Mistreatment materializes when a node’s access cost for fetching objects worsens as a result of cooperation. To that end, we outlined an emulation-based framework for the development of mistreatment-resilient distributed selfish caching schemes. Under this framework, a node opts to participate in the group only if its individual access cost is less than the one achieved while in isolation. In this paper, we argue against the use of such static “all or nothing” approaches which force an individual node to either join or not join a cooperative group. Instead, we advocate the use of a smoother approach, whereby the level of cooperation is tied to the benefit that a node begets from joining a group. To that end, we propose a distributed and easily deployable feedback-control scheme which mitigates mistreatment. Under our proposed adaptive scheme, a node independently emulates its performance as if it were acting in a greedy local manner and then adapts its caching policy in the direction of reducing its measured access cost below its emulated greedy local cost. Using control-theoretic analysis, we show that our proposed scheme converges to the minimal access cost, and indeed outperforms any static scheme. We also show that our scheme results in insignificant degradation to the performance of the caching group under typical operating scenaria.     

基于深度优先序列模式挖掘的预取模型

序列模式挖掘能够发现隐含在Web日志中的用户的访问规律,可以被用来在Web预取模型中预测即将访问的Web对象。目前大多数序列模式挖掘是基于Apriori的宽度优先算法。提出了基于位图深度优先挖掘算法,采用基于字典树数据结构的深度优先策略,同时采用位图保存和计算各序列的支持度,能够较迅速地挖掘出频繁序列。将该序列模式挖掘算法应用于Web预取模型中,在预取缓存一体化的条件下实验表明具有较好的性能。     

An SPN-Based Integrated Model for Web Prefetching and Caching

The World Wide Web has become the primary means for information dissemination. Due to the limited resources of the network bandwidth, users always suffer from long time waiting. Web prefetching and web caching are the primary approaches to reducing the user perceived access latency and improving the quality of services. In this paper, a Stochastic Petri Nets （SPN） based integrated web prefetching and caching model （IWPCM） is presented and the performance evaluation of IWPCM is made. The performance metrics, access latency, throughput, HR （hit ratio） and BHR （byte hit ratio） are analyzed and discussed. Simulations show that compared with caching only model （CM）, IWPCM can further improve the throughput, HR and BHR efficiently and reduce the access latency. The performance evaluation based on the SPN model can provide a basis for implementation of web prefetching and caching and the combination of web prefetching and caching holds the promise of improving the QoS of web systems.     

Web预取模型分析

WWW的快速增长导致网络拥塞和服务器超载。缓存技术被认为是减轻服务器负载、减少网络拥塞、降低客户访问延迟的有效途径之一，但作用有限。为进一步提高WWW性能，引入了预取技术。文中首先介绍了Web预取技术的基本思想及其研究可行性，然后分析了现有Web预取模型，最后给出了一个Web预取模型应具有的关键属性。     

A novel server-side proxy caching strategy for large-scale multimedia applications

Nowadays, server-side Web caching becomes an important technique used to reduce the User Perceived Latency (UPL). In large-scale multimedia systems, there are many Web proxies, connected with a multimedia server, that can cache some most popular multimedia objects and respond to the requests for them. Multimedia objects have some particular characteristic, e.g., strict QoS requirements. Hence, even some efficient conventional caching strategies based on cache hit ratio, meant for non-multimedia objects, will confront some problems in dealing with the multimedia objects. If we consider additional resources of proxy besides cache space, say bandwidth, we can readily observe that high hit ratios may deteriorate the entire system performance. In this paper, we propose a novel placement model for networked multimedia systems, referred to as the H^k/T model, which considers the combined influence of arrival rate, size, and playback time to select the objects to be cached. Based on this model, we propose an innovative Web caching algorithm, named as the ART-Greedy algorithm, which can balance the load among the proxies and achieve a minimum Average Response Time (ART) of the requests. Our experimental results conclusively demonstrate that the ART-Greedy algorithm outperforms the most popular and commonly used LFU (Least Frequently Used) algorithm significantly, and can achieve a better performance than the byte-hit algorithm when the system utilization is medium and high.     

无线Web访问的缓存和预取机制

缓存和预取在提高无线环境下的Web访问性能方面发挥着重要作用。文章研究针对无线局域网的Web缓存和预取机制,分别基于数据挖掘和信息论提出了采用序列挖掘和延迟更新的预测算法,设计了上下文感知的预取算法和获益驱动的缓存替换机制,上述算法已在Web缓存系统OnceEasyCache中实现。性能评估实验结果表明,上述算法的集成能有效地提高缓存命中率和延迟节省率。     

Maintaining Cache Coherence through Compiler-Directed Data Prefetching

In this paper, we propose a compiler-directed cache coherence scheme which makes use of data prefetching to enforce cache coherence in large-scale distributed shared-memory (DSM) systems. TheCache Coherence With Data Prefetching(CCDP) scheme uses compiler analyses to identify potentially stale and nonstale data references in a parallel program and enforces cache coherence by prefetching the potentially stale references. In this manner, the CCDP scheme brings up-to-date data into the caches to avoid stale references and also hides the latency of these memory accesses. Furthermore, the scheme also prefetches the nonstale references to hide their memory latencies. To evaluate the performance impact of the CCDP scheme on a real system, we applied the scheme on five applications from the SPEC CFP95 and CFP92 benchmark suites, and executed the resulting codes on the Cray T3D. The experimental results indicate that for all of the applications studied, our scheme provides significant performance improvements by caching shared data and using data prefetching to enforce cache coherence and to hide memory latency.     

基于分布式协同缓存机制的Web Proxy研究

提出了一种基于全局内存对象缓冲池的高性能分布式Web Proxy模型,通过在系统范围内构建类似于分布式共享存储器系统的缓冲池,并将分布式Web Proxy系统中访问最频繁的Web对象置于其中,则Web对象的平均服务时间缩短,提高了系统性能。通过实际Proxy服务器的访问日志进行了系统性能仿真,结果表明,该机制可以提高分布式Web Proxy服务器的性能。     

分布式文件系统元数据服务的负载均衡框架

请求负载均衡,是分布式文件系统元数据管理需要面对的核心问题.以最大化元数据服务器集群吞吐量为目标,在已有元数据管理层之上设计实现了一种分布式缓存框架,专门管理热点元数据,均衡不断变化的负载.与已有的元数据负载均衡架构相比,这种两层的负载均衡架构灵活度更高,对负载的感知能力更强,并且避免了热点元数据重新分布、迁移引起的元数据命名空间结构被破坏的情况.经观察分析,元数据尺寸小、数量大,预取错误元数据带来的代价远远小于预取错误数据带来的代价.针对元数据的以上鲜明特点,提出一种元数据预取策略和基于预取机制的元数据缓存替换算法,加强了上述分布式缓存层的性能,这种两层的元数据负载均衡框架同时考虑了缓存一致性的问题.最后,在一个真实的分布式文件系统中验证了框架及方法的有效性.     

浅析缓存预取技术

针对计算机系统中CPU与I/O性能差距持续扩大的的问题,引出缓存及预取的概念,并分析预取技术需要处理的几个关键问题。根据预取的发展,介绍并比较几类典型的预取算法。针对目前的各种软硬件新技术,探讨预取技术所面临的困难及其发展趋势。     

User-assisted in-network caching in information-centric networking

In information-centric networking, in-network caching has the potential to improve network efficiency and content distribution performance by satisfying user requests with cached content rather than downloading the requested content from remote sources. In this respect, users who request, download, and keep the content may be able to contribute to in-network caching by sharing their downloaded content with other users in the same network domain (i.e., user-assisted in-network caching). In this paper, we examine various aspects of user-assisted in-network caching in the hopes of efficiently utilizing user resources to achieve in-network caching. Through simulations, we first show that user-assisted in-network caching has attractive features, such as self-scalable caching, a near-optimal cache hit ratio (that can be achieved when the content is fully cached by the in-network caching) based on stable caching, and performance improvements over in-network caching. We then examine the caching strategy of user-assisted in-network caching. We examine three caching strategies based on a centralized server that maintains all content availability information and informs each user of what to cache. We also examine three caching strategies based on each user’s content availability information. We first show that the caching strategy affects the distribution of upload overhead across users and the number of cache hits in each segment. One interesting observation is that, even with a small storage space (i.e., 0.1% of the content size per user), the centralized and distributed approaches improve the cache hit ratio by 50% and 45%, respectively. With an overall view of caching information, the centralized approach can achieve a higher cache hit ratio than the distributed approach. Based on this observation, we discuss a distributed approach with a larger view of caching information than the distributed approach and, through simulations, confirm that a larger view leads to a higher cache hit ratio. Another interesting observation is that the random distributed strategy yields comparable performance to more complex strategies.     

基于用户特性的搜索引擎查询结果缓存与预取

针对搜索引擎查询结果缓存与预取问题,与传统的基于查询特性相关的方法不同,提出了一种基于用户特性的缓存与预取方法,用于提高搜索引擎系统性能,尤其针对部分用户效果更显著。通过对国内某著名商业搜索引擎用户的查询贡献分析得出,用户对搜索引擎的贡献具有长尾分布特性,结合该特性设计查询结果预测模型来进行预取和分区缓存。在该搜索引擎两个月的大规模真实用户查询日志上的实验结果表明,与传统的基于查询特性的典型方法相比,该方法可以获得3.03%~4.17%的命中率提升,对于查询贡献最大的0.25%的用户群体,可以获得20.52%~28.2%的命中率提升。     

CyberWalk: a web-based distributed virtual walkthrough environment

A distributed virtual walkthrough environment allows users connected to the geometry server to walk through a specific place of interest, without having to travel physically. This place of interest may be a virtual museum, virtual library or virtual university. There are two basic approaches to distribute the virtual environment from the geometry server to the clients, complete replication and on-demand transmission. Although the on-demand transmission approach saves waiting time and optimizes network usage, many technical issues need to be addressed in order for the system to be interactive. CyberWalk is a web-based distributed virtual walkthrough system developed based on the on-demand transmission approach. It achieves the necessary performance with a multiresolution caching mechanism. First, it reduces the model transmission and rendering times by employing a progressive multiresolution modeling technique. Second, it reduces the Internet response time by providing a caching and prefetching mechanism. Third, it allows a client to continue to operate, at least partially, when the Internet is disconnected. The caching mechanism of CyberWalk tries to maintain at least a minimum resolution of the object models in order to provide at least a coarse view of the objects to the viewer. All these features allow CyberWalk to provide sufficient interactivity to the user for virtual walkthrough over the Internet environment. In this paper, we demonstrate the design and implementation of CyberWalk. We investigate the effectiveness of the multiresolution caching mechanism of CyberWalk in supporting virtual walkthrough applications in the Internet environment through numerous experiments, both on the simulation system and on the prototype system.