An efficient file transmission algorithm for distributed computing systems

In a distributed system, executing a program often requires the access of remote data files. An efficient data transmission strategy is thus important for real-time applications. Since data files may be replicated and their locations are transparent to the executed program, it becomes the system's responsibility to select a proper file server such that data can be transmitted in an effective way. We consider the scenario that a particular program needs several data files simultaneously for its execution. Each data file may have replicas across the network. The problem is how to find a collection of file servers and the routing paths such that the data transmission time is minimum. An exhaustive approach could of course find the optimal solution. However, it pays a high computation price. We thus propose a heuristic method. Results obtained from the proposed method are encouraging.