Boundary Chord: a novel peer-to-peer algorithm for replica location mechanism in grid environment

The emerging grids need an efficient replica location mechanism. In the experience of developing ChinaGrid supporting platform (CGSP), a grid middleware that builds a uniform platform supporting multiple grid-based applications, we meet a challenge of utilizing the properties of locality in replica location process to construct a practical and high performance replica location mechanism. The key of the solution to this challenge is to design an efficient replica location algorithm that meets above requirements. Some previous works have been done to build a replica location mechanism, but they are not suitable for replica location in a grid environment with multiple applications like ChinaGrid. In this paper, we present a novel peer-to-peer algorithm for replica location mechanism, Boundary Chord, which has the merits of locality awareness, self-organization, and load balancing. Simulation results show that the algorithm has better performance than other structured peer-to-peer solutions to the replica location problem.