Design and analysis of load balancing/scheduling strategies on distributed computer networks using virtual routing approach

Abstract

Parallel and distributed heterogeneous computing has been proven to be an efficient and successful way for various applications. There are several metrics to quantify the performance of a distributed system. In this thesis, we consider the problem of load balancing in distributed systems. Specifically, we consider balancing indivisible loads across the network nodes so as to achieve an optimal response time. We attempt to employ a novel idea in which we use the concept of virtual routing for balancing the work loads among the nodes. We also extend our analysis and design of algorithms to the case of scheduling large volume computational loads (divisible loads) originating from single or multiple sites on arbitrary networks. For each of the real-life scenarios considered, the problem is carefully decomposed into sub-problems and distributed strategies by virtual routing approach are derived systematically. Simulation and experimental results have been provided to highlight the effectiveness of the proposed strategies.