A periodic symmetrically-initiated load balancing algorithm for distributed systems

The paper presents a new load balancing algorithm called Periodic Symmetrically-Initiated (PSI). It is symmetrically initiated and uses periodic polling of a single random node to acquire information about the system state. Its performance on a distributed system is compared to the following algorithms: Random, Sender, Receiver, and Symmetric. These algorithms have been evaluated by M. Livny (1984), where the terms Sender and Receiver are referred to as Forward and Reverse respectively. The algorithms' performance under different variants to the system model is also studied to assess the sensitivity of the PSI algorithm to changes in the system attributes. This includes the communication bandwidth, the system size, the file system structure, and the workload model. The results of the study show that the PSI algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms and is robust over a range of system attributes