Distributed scheduling strategy for divisible loads on arbitrarily configured distributed networks using load balancing via virtual routing

Abstract

In this paper, we consider a scheduling problem for divisible loads originating from single or multiple sites on arbitrary networks. We first propose a generalized mathematical model and formulate the scheduling problem as an optimization problem with an objective to minimize the processing time of the loads. We derive a number of theoretical results on the solution of the optimization problem. On the basis of these first set of results, we propose an efficient algorithm for scheduling divisible loads using the concept of load balancing via virtual routing for an arbitrary network configuration. The proposed algorithm has three major attractive features. Firstly, the algorithm is simple to realize and can be implemented in a distributed fashion. The second one is in its style of working by avoiding the need for generating a timing diagram explicitly for any complex networks having an arbitrary network topology. The last one is its capability of handling divisible loads originating from both single and multiple sites. When divisible loads originate from a single node, we compare the proposed algorithm with a recently proposed RAOLD algorithm which is based on minimum cost spanning tree [J. Yao, V. Bharadwaj, Design and performance analysis of divisible load scheduling strategies on arbitrary graphs, Cluster Computing 7(2) (2004) 191-207]. When divisible loads originate from multiple sites, we test the performance on sparse, medium and densely connected networks. This is the first time in the divisible load theory (DLT) literature that such a generic approach for handling divisible loads originating from multiple sites on arbitrary networks employing load balancing via virtual routing is attempted. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.