TACON: tactical construction of overlay networks

Internet-based overlay networks are likely to demonstrate poor performance when deployed on the Internet without consideration of topological and link properties. We introduce a new method for tactical construction of unstructured overlay networks which exploits a minimal landmark infrastructure to align the overlay with the underlying network. Our framework results in well-connected overlays which can better meet the growing demands of current applications. We demonstrate, using simulation, that our approach yields reduced latency, better connectivity and higher availability of resources than conventional overlay systems and other landmark-based approaches, thereby providing a scalable and efficient approach for overlay construction.