Topologies and behavioral properties of the network

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Topologiesand behavioral properties of the
network

• Yvon Kermarrec
• Based on http//www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/12/
  14/topologies_one.html

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Key player the network

• The network plays a central role for
  communication and coordination
• How is it structured ? How does it behave ? What
  are its impacts on the applications ?

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Agenda

• Topologies and structural properties of the
  network
• Behavioral properties of the network

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Topologies issues

• Centralized vs. decentralized systems
• How the nodes in the system are connected.
• Topology can be considered at many different
  levels physical, logical, connection, or
  organizational.
• Topology is considered in terms of the
  information flow.
• Nodes in the graph are individual computers or
  programs,
• links between nodes indicate that those nodes are
  sharing information regularly in the system.

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Centralized topology (star)

• Centralized
• Client/server
• Web servers
• Databases
• Napster search
• Instant Messaging
• Popular Power

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Centralized topology

• Centralized systems are the most familiar form of
  topology
• Typically seen as the client/server pattern used
  by databases, web servers, and other simple
  distributed systems.
• All function and information is centralized into
  one server with many clients connecting directly
  to the server to send and receive information.
• SETI_at_Home is a fully centralized architecture
  with the job dispatcher as the server

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Ring topology
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Ring topology

• A single centralized server cannot handle high
  client load, so a common solution is to use a
  cluster of machines arranged in a ring to act as
  a distributed server.
• Communication between the nodes coordinates
  state-sharing, producing a group of nodes that
  provide identical function but have failover and
  load-balancing capabilities.
• Unlike the other topologies here, ring systems
  are generally built assuming the machines are all
  nearby on the network and owned by a single
  organization.

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Hierarchical
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Hierarchical

• Hierarchical systems have a long history on the
  Internet, but in practice are often overlooked as
  a distinct distributed systems topology.
• The best-known hierarchical system on the
  Internet is the Domain Name Service, where
  authority flows from the root name-servers to the
  server for the registered name.
• NTP, the Network Time Protocol, creates another
  hierarchical system.

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Hierarchical

• In NTP, there are root time servers that have
  authoritative clocks other computers synchronize
  to root time servers in a self-organizing tree.
• NTP has over 175,000 hosts with most hosts being
  two or three links away from a root time source.
• Usenet is another large hierarchical system,
  using a tree-like structure to copy articles
  between servers.

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Decentralized
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Decentralized

• The final topology we consider here is
  decentralized systems, where all peers
  communicate symmetrically and have equal roles.
• Gnutella is probably the most "pure"
  decentralized system used in practice today, with
  only a small centralized function to bootstrap a
  new host.
• Many other file-sharing systems are also designed
  to be decentralized, such as Freenet or
  OceanStore.
• Decentralized systems are not new the Internet
  routing architecture itself is largely
  decentralized, with the Border Gateway Protocol
  used to coordinate the peering links between
  various autonomous systems.

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Hybrid topologies

• Distributed systems often have a more complex
  organization than any one simple topology.
• Real-world systems often combine several
  topologies into one system, making a hybrid
  topology.
• Nodes typically play multiple roles in such a
  system. For example, a node might have a
  centralized interaction with one part of the
  system, while being part of a hierarchy in
  another part.

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Central ring
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Central ring

• As mentioned above, serious web server
  applications often have a ring of servers for
  load balancing and failover.
• The server system itself is a ring, but the
  system as a whole (including the clients) is a
  hybrid a centralized system where the server is
  itself a ring. The result is the simplicity of a
  centralized system (from the client's point of
  view) with the robustness of a ring.

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Centralized centralized
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Centralized centralized

• The server in a centralized system is itself
  often a client of one or more other servers.
  Stacking multiple centralized systems is the core
  of n-tier application frameworks.
• For example, when a web browser contacts a
  server, the software on that server may just be
  formatting results into HTML for presentation and
  itself calling to servers hosting business logic
  or data.
• Web services intermediaries such as Grand Central
  Networks also create several layers of
  centralized system. Centralized systems are often
  stacked as a way to compose function.

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Centralized decentralized

• Clip2 Gnutella Reflector
• FastTrack / KaZaA
• Morpheus
• Email

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Strength and weakness

• Plenty of topologies to choose from
• What is each kind good for?
• Need a set of properties to measure

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Issues to be considered

• Manageability
• How hard is it to keep working?
• Information coherence
• How authoritative is info? (Auditing,
  non-repudiation)
• Extensibility
• How easy is it to grow?
• Fault tolerance
• How well can it handle failures?
• Security
• How hard is it to subvert?
• Resistance to legal or political intervention
• How hard is it to shut down? (Can be good or bad)
• Scalability
• How big can it grow?

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Centralized

• System is all in one place
• All information is in one place
• No one can add on to system
• Single point of failure
• One machine.

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

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Ring

• Simple rules for relationships
• Easy logic for state
• Only ring owner can add
• Fail-over to next host
• As long as ring has one owner
• Just add more hosts

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

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Hierarchical

• Chain of authority
• Cache consistency
• Add more leaves, rebalance
• Root is vulnerable
• Too easy to spoof links
• Hugely scalable DNS

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

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Decentralized

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

• Very difficult, many owners
• Difficult, unreliable peers
• Anyone can join in!
• Redundancy
• Difficult, open research
• Theory yes Practice no

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Centralized Ring

• Just manage the ring
• As coherent as ring
• No more than ring
• Ring is a huge win
• As secure as ring
• Ring is a huge win

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

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Centralized Decentralized

• Same as decentralized
• Better than decentralized
• Anyone can still join!
• Plenty of redundancy
• Same as decentralized
• Looking very hopeful

• Manageable
• Coherent
• Extensible
• Fault Tolerant
• Secure
• Scalable

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Centralized vs. Decentralized

• Centralized is pretty good!
• Manageable
• Coherent
• Security
• Decentralized is exciting
• Extensible
• Massive fault tolerance
• Lawsuit-proof
• Scalability is the big question

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Conclusions

• Importance of regularity
• Impacts of the topology on the application code
• To communicate with other machines routing
• To broadcast
• To deal with failure
• The application and the underlying topology are
  closely related
• The application can benefit of the topology and
  can rely on multiple logical topologies

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Conclusions

• Centralized is easy to deal with
• Major architecture for distributed systems
• Combines well with rings
• Decentralized is good, needs research
• Coherence, Manageability, Security
• Scalability
• Hierarchical is overlooked
• Combining architectures is powerful

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Behavioral properties of the network

• Ideal nertwork does not
• Loose a message
• Duplicate message
• Alter the message content
• Desequence messages
• Provide bound for communication times
• But we have to deal with non perfect networks !