Context-Aware Replica Placement in Peer-to-Peer Overlay Networks

The high demand for rich on-line media content such as Video-On-Demand (VOD) has lead to a rapid increase in internet congestion. Today peer-to-peer overlay networks play a key role in content delivery. Replication in P2P networks can significantly reduce congestion and minimize access time. However, the challenge is to decide on which content to replicate, where to place replicas, which replica to replace and which replica is to be designated as the primary copy. The current distribution and delivery of content can be improved by making replica content placements, replacement and management context aware. In this paper we propose a context-aware replica placement algorithm that reduces access time by placing multiple copies of content at various strategic locations using a number of context-aware parameters; we also present a replica replacement algorithm considering the size of the content as well as other important factors. Moreover, we propose a primary copy assignment algorithm that minimizes the content update overhead by choosing the right replica as the primary copy. Our discussions and comparative study with other algorithms shows that the proposed algorithm is effective.