An efficient algorithm for application-layering anycasting

Anycasting communication is proposed in IPv6, and it is designed to support server replication by allowing applications to select and communicate with the “best” server, according to some performance or policy criteria, among the replicated servers. Originally any-cast researchers focus on network layer. In this paper we pay more attention to application-layer anycasting, because at application layer we can obtain more flexibility and scalability. First of all, we describe the application-layer anycast model, and then summarize the previous work in application-layer anycasting, especially the periodical probing algorithms for updating the database of anycast resolver. After that, we present our algorithm, the requirement-based probing algorithm, an efficient and practical algorithm. In the end, we analyse the algorithms using the queuing theory and the statistics characteristics of Internet traffic. The results show that the requirement-base probing algorithm has better performance not only in the average waiting time for all anycast queries, but also in the average time used for an anycast query.