Comparison of Name Resolution Algorithms in Active Networks: Introduction

Graham P. Phillips
Computer Science Department
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA 90098-0781
graham@isi.edu

Introduction:

This project is motivated by the active network research being undertaken by DARPA together with various research groups in the United States. An active network is different from contemporary networks in that code is carried in packets and executed at the network layer. Various researchers have suggested that code should be dynamically loaded on demand. This approach would allow large code to be separated into many smaller capsules, so that only the main capsule need be explicitly sent into the network (the other capsules would be demand-loaded by the main capsule). The question we would like to answer in this memo is how an efficient demand-loading mechanism could be constructed. We separate the demand loading mechanism into two modules: a name resolution module and a transfer module. The name resolution module performs a function that maps the name of an object to its location, while the transfer module is responsible for transferring the object from the remote location. This memo considers the mapping function only. The transfer module might consist of a reliable transfer protocol such as FTP or light-weight transfer protocol proposed by the ANTS toolkit.