A resource query interface for network-aware applications

Development of portable network-aware applications demands an interface to the network that allows an application to obtain information about its execution environment. The paper motivates and describes the design of Remos, an API that allows network-aware applications to obtain relevant information. The major challenges in defining a uniform interface are network heterogeneity, diversity in traffic requirements, variability of the information, and resource sharing in the network. Remos addresses these issues with two abstraction levels, explicit management of resource sharing, and statistical measurements. The flows abstraction captures the communication between nodes, and the topologies abstraction provides a logical view of network connectivity. Remos measurements are made at network level, and therefore information to manage sharing of resources is available. Remos is designed to deliver best effort information to applications, and it explicitly adds statistical reliability and variability measures to the core information. The paper also presents preliminary results and experience with a prototype Remos implementation for a high speed IP based network testbed.