So, lets start with what we are trying to achieve:
The goal of load balancing is to have a node receive as many requests as it can handle but no more. Our current mechanism for achieving this relies on an effectively binary negative feedback mechanism that just isn't working. The solution is probably to make the feedback contain more information.
So: A node should be able to establish how many queries it can handle without problems in a given stretch of time (I assume this should be reasonably easy to do experimentally). What if a node told other nodes how many requests each of them are permitted to send to it in a given time-period to ensure that the total such number of incoming requests aren't exceeded?
Now, obviously many nodes might not meet their quota, in which case part of their quota could be redistributed to other nodes in some manner, although they would have the right to reclaim their quota should they need to send more requests than they have been doing.
Still a somewhat unformed idea, but perhaps a basis for a non-alchemaic (sp?) approach to load-balancing?
Ian. _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://dodo.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
