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From the beginning the Internet was dubbed the "information superhighway," and very quickly users became stuck in massive traffic jams. Many solutions have been attempted, but the unprecedented growth of Internet use has continued to outpace technology's ability to provide enough bandwidth to speed the flow of information.
Now, a novel approach by CAS Computer Science Associate Professors Azer Bestavros and Mark Crovella and Assistant Professor John Byers is harnessing the power of popular Internet servers to get the system back up to speed. Called MASS Servers (massively accessed scalable servers), they are the very servers that create the traffic that jams the system.
The MASS Servers Research Group, consisting of the three CAS faculty members, is developing three suites of software, named Beacon, TurnPike, and BackBay, that will interact to help eliminate congestion. Beacon is designed to observe and diagnose the condition of the network by tracing how the messages the server generates move throughout the system. Over time, Beacon will accumulate an understanding of the network's dynamics, learning where and when congestion is likely to occur. TurnPike, a suite of management and control protocols, uses the diagnostic information generated by Beacon to plot alternate routes. Messages are redirected to less congested paths and departure times are scheduled for maximum efficiency. BackBay provides the architectural structure that allows Beacon and TurnPike to work together.
The work of the MASS Servers Research Group is supported by a National Science Foundation CISE/ANIR Special Projects in Networking Grant. |
