Dynamic load balancing for the reduction of network traffic using network transferable computers

Dynamic load balancing (DLB) making use of network transferable computers (NTC) and Mobile IP is a new approach to performing load balancing for network traffic. In client– server systems when access requests to a specific server become particularly high from time to time, excessive amounts of network traffic will be generated on the route connecting to the server. With a server that is receiving a high concentration of requests, the provision of a mirror server can help provide load balancing to deal with issues of host performance, but it is not necessarily the best approach when the objective is principally to balance the load of the traffic on the network. In the DLB approach, the server is given the capability to migrate across the network; the server can therefore be moved to a location from which the route over which request and response packets to the server are causing congestion can be avoided. Since this results in the corresponding traffic being eliminated from the given network route, it allows the load balancing of network traffic. The proposed method is constructed via the use of an NTC system, Mobile IP, and a server migration manager. The server migration manager system can provide the following functionality. First, it is able to analyze information obtained from the network in which the server is located and provide predictions necessary for determining migration decisions. Next it can determine whether or not the server should actually migrate and in the case that it does can determine the location to migrate to. We have conducted evaluations of this method in simulation experiments and confirmed that traffic was reduced on the targeted network route. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electron Comm Jpn Pt 1, 90(11): 48– 60, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/ecja.20345