Commercial Applications of Ubiquitous-Computing Technologies

Application layer networks such as content distribution networks or peer-to-peer networks are software architectures that allow the provisioning of services requiring large amounts of resources, which can be obtained from computing systems connected over simple communication infrastructures such as the Internet. Managing application layer networks is a general task of decentralized resource allocation, for which economic principles are applicable. The project pursued here combines economic and computer science research to provide new coordination mechanisms for large-scale computer networks. In the application layer network context of GRID networks, existing systems such as Darwin, Globus or Radar already employ a centralized auctioneer instance somewhere in the network for service control and resource allocation. This centralized approach has several drawbacks, some of which cannot, in our view, be solved by incremental research. Considering this, the project partners propose an assessment of a fully decentralized economic approach to resource allocation, the Catallaxy paradigm, for managing distributed application layer networks. The experiment will consist of the simulation of an application layer network being operated under the catallaxy paradigm and a baseline centralized system. The simulation results will determine how the system behaves under both paradigms.