Architectural description based Overlay Networks

Abstract

Overlay Networks are heavily used in Distributed computing applications. They often have heterogeneous architectures, such as Client Server, Peer to Peer or Hybrid. In this work, we try to abstract the Architecture of an Overlay Network into a document called an Architectural Description (AD). The Architectural Description document may contain the Roles and the Relationships of a particular Overlay Architecture. The Architectural Description documents may be exchanged among the nodes and parsed by the nodes themselves, enabling the nodes to adopt different roles and relationships. By introducing a new AD, a new Overlay Network can be formed dynamically.