A symmetric and resilient configuration scheme for multiple name servers

Abstract

Although name service is on essential function in distributed systems, little work has been done on configuration schemes for multiple name servers. This paper presents a configuration scheme for multiple name servers and name service protocol. The scheme creates a configuration with any number of name servers, and realizes a symmetric and fault-tolerant name service. Name data are distributed to name servers equally and the cost of the name service is independent of the server location. The scheme is efficient because it realizes a lower bound of communication complexity. The paper investigates the relations among the number of nodes, the number of name servers, fault-tolerance, the number of data in a server, and the total number of data in all servers to obtain equations for these relationships. Changes in the resiliency and the number of data are shown as functions of the number of nodes and the number of servers in three cases.