Scalable group membership service for mobile internet using layered architecture

Abstract

Group communication system (GCS) is a useful mechanism for constructing reliable, fault-tolerant distributed application. When GCS is extended in mobile environment, the membership change occurs frequently due to the mobility of mobile nodes and unreliable wireless communication within a cell. In this paper, we propose a scalable group communication scheme to support mobile systems in an Internet environment with wireless cells. Our scheme leverages the layered approach, our previous work, to enhance the scalability. Furthermore, to shield group view from the mobility and temporary disconnection of mobile hosts, we extend the hierarchical view management of layered approach. The simulation result shows that our scheme can reduce the overhead of membership management by 40% and the number of messages exchanged to complete the view event process substantially.