On the role of topology in autonomously coping with failures in content dissemination systems

Content dissemination systems comprise a large number of nodes that organize themselves into different topologies. In this paper, we explore the role of topologies in autonomously coping with failures. The topologies we consider are based on regular, random, small-world, and power law graphs. Connections within these topologies can account for network proximity and are suitable for real-time communications. We explore specific attributes of a topology that contribute to its failure resiliency. The metrics that we use to profile this resilience include: communication path lengths, network partitions, migration of workloads, and the impact on system throughput. This research will allow designers to choose topologies or configure metrics for a specific topology to achieve their performance objectives.