Implementing distributed floor control protocols on PlanetLab network (non-reviewed)

Collaborative applications are a class of applications that involve sharing of data between a set of geographically distributed users who are connected to each other through a network. Examples of such applications include video conferencing, collaborative design and simulation, distributed database replication, and online games. In this type of applications, users coordinate their activities so as to achieve a common goal. This type of distributed applications calls for efficient group communication which entails determining routes that are independent of the underlying network. To meet the demands of these distributed applications, there have been increased research efforts in the development of network protocols that can be executed at the application layer. These protocols are built for virtual networks named as
overlay

networks
. In an overlay the end-users self-organize into a network architecture and share the responsibility for creating, consuming, and forwarding messages to other end-users.