title: Statistical mechanical load balancer for the web.
abstract: The maximum entropy principle from statistical mechanics states that a closed system attains an equilibrium distribution that maximizes its entropy. We first show that for graphs with fixed number of edges one can define a stochastic edge dynamic that can serve as an effective thermalization scheme, and hence, the underlying graphs are expected to attain their maximum-entropy states, which turn out to be Erdös-Rényi (ER) random graphs. We next show that (i) a rate-equation-based analysis of node degree distribution does indeed confirm the maximum-entropy principle, and (ii) the edge dynamic can be effectively implemented using short random walks on the underlying graphs, leading to a local algorithm for the generation of ER random graphs. The resulting statistical mechanical system can be adapted to provide a distributed and local (i.e., without any centralized monitoring) mechanism for load balancing, which can have a significant impact in increasing the efficiency and utilization of both the Internet (e.g., efficient web mirroring), and large-scale computing infrastructure (e.g., cluster and grid computing).
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California , Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. jsab@pobox.com
authors.forename: Jesse S A
authors.initials: JS
authors.lastname: Bridgewater
authors.forename: P Oscar
authors.initials: PO
authors.lastname: Boykin
authors.forename: Vwani P
authors.initials: VP
authors.lastname: Roychowdhury