Scalable Load-Distance Balancing in Large Networks

We focus on a setting where users of a real-time networked application need to be assigned to servers, e.g., assignment of hosts to Internet gateways in a wireless mesh network (WMN). The service delay experienced by a user is a sum of the network-incurred delay, which depends on its network distance from the server, and a server-incurred delay, stemming from the load on the server. We introduce the problem of load-distance balancing, which seeks to minimize the maximum service delay among all users. We address the challenge of finding a near-optimal assignment in a distributed manner, without global communication, in a large network. We present a scalable algorithm for doing so, and evaluate our solution with a case study of its application in an urban WMN.