Dynamic load-balancing of Jini services with smart proxies

This paper presents a dynamic load-balancing technique for Jini services. Distributing loads evenly is critical for high performance on a distributed system. However, the prototype implementation of Jini does not provide any load-balancing mechanism. This paper proposes a smart proxy architecture as a remedy. A client can easily switch to another service through a smart proxy once the current service is too busy. In addition, the process is transparent to the client. In order for a smart proxy to determine if it is necessary to switch to a less busy service, the load information of all services is stored in a ServiceTable located in the Lookup service. How the information in ServiceTable is used depends on the load-balancing strategy implemented in the smart proxy. Several strategies have been developed and the experimental results demonstrate these strategies can distribute loads evenly. Furthermore, the load information of any service is updated when the service renews its lease with the Lookup Service. Consequently, updating load information does not incur any additional network communications.