Investigating the Individuality/Scalability Tradeoff in the Provision of Networked Services

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Networked services are at the heart of the information revolution. This work focuses on two characteristics of a networked service: 1) scalability: the ability of the service to handle a large number of end users with low per-user cost, and 2) individuality: the ability of the service to deal with differing requirements imposed because of heterogeneity of network paths leading to the end-users. Although a high level of both individuality and scalability are desirable features of any networked service, they are normally conflicting goals that need to be traded-off with each other. This research aims to investigate this tradeoff from the networking infrastructure's viewpoint. This project seeks to answer: 1) In services using multicast communication, is it possible to add a level of individuality while sacrificing scalability in a controlled manner? 2) In services using unicast communication, is it possible to improve scalability while controlling how much individuality is sacrificed? 3) Is it possible not to require the labeling of services as unicast or multicast and move the burden of deciding the appropriate network support to a "generic" interface layer? To answer these questions the research seeks to develop network support mechanisms to navigate the individuality/scalability spectrum, giving multicast services the ability to be more individualized and unicast services the ability to be more scalable. The research will consist of investigating specific instances of adding a measure of individuality to multicast services and specific instances of making unicast services more scalable by sharing resources through multicast and requesting batching at servers. The research will include services such as video distribution, Web information delivery and multimedia-on-demand (live and streamed). The work will consider Internet as well as ATM-style networking with some emphasis on Internet over ATM architectures.