NSDI '06 — Abstract
Pp. 253–266 of the Proceedings
An Architecture for Internet Data Transfer
Niraj Tolia, Carnegie Mellon University; Michael Kaminsky, Intel Research Pittsburgh; David G. Andersen and Swapnil Patil, Carnegie Mellon University
Abstract
This paper presents the design and implementation of DOT,
a flexible architecture for data transfer.
This architecture
separates content negotiation from the data transfer itself.
Applications determine what data they need to send and then use a
new transfer service to send it. This transfer
service acts as a common interface between
applications and the lower-level network layers, facilitating
innovation both above and below. The transfer service frees
developers from re-inventing transfer mechanisms
in each new application. New transfer mechanisms, in turn, can be
easily deployed without modifying existing applications.
We discuss the benefits that arise from separating data transfer
into a service and the challenges this service must overcome.
The paper then examines the implementation of DOT and its plugin framework for
creating new data transfer mechanisms. A set of
microbenchmarks shows that the DOT prototype performs well,
and that the overhead it imposes is unnoticeable in the
wide-area. End-to-end experiments using more complex configurations
demonstrate DOT's ability to implement effective, new data delivery mechanisms
underneath existing services.
Finally, we evaluate a production
mail server modified to use DOT using trace data gathered from a
live email server. Converting the mail server
required only 184 lines-of-code changes to the server, and the
resulting system reduces the bandwidth needed to send email by up to 20%.
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