On probe strategies for dynamic multimedia server selection

While there has been extensive research into wide-area load balancing for Web servers, dynamic server selection issues for rich media have largely been ignored We argue that streaming media imposes new challenges that are not met by current proposals for collecting and disseminating server and network path metrics. We define a model for quantitatively evaluating the network overhead of competing Internet measurement strategies, propose a novel strategy to better meet requirements for rich media, and use topologies representative of the Internet to show our strategy reduces total and average per link probe overhead by as much as 98%. We discuss additional advantages to our approach, including the ability to represent multiple, potentially streaming media specific, metrics; the ability to effect policy-based selection; and protection against denial of service attacks.