GIT-CERCS-03-22
Yair Wiseman, Karsten Schwan, Patrick Widener,
Efficient End to End Data Exchange Using Configurable Compression
We explore the use of compression methods to improve the
middleware-based exchange of information in interactive or
collaborative distributed applications. In such applications, good
compression factors must be accompanied by compression speeds suitable
for the data transfer rates sustainable across network links. Our
approach combines methods that continuously monitor current network
and processor resources and assess compression effectiveness, with
techniques that automatically choose suitable compression
techniques. By integrating these techniques into middleware, there is
little need for end user involvement, other than expressing the target
rates of data transmission. The resulting network- and user-aware
compression methods are evaluated experimentally across a range of
network links and application data, the former ranging from low end
links to homes, to wide-area Internet links, to high end links in
intranets, the latter including both scientific (binary molecular dynamics data) and commercial (XML) data sets. Results attained
demonstrate substantial improvements of this adaptive technique for
data compression over non-adaptive approaches, where better
compression methods are used when CPU loads are low and/or network
links are slow, and where less effective and typically, faster
compression techniques are used in high end network infrastructures.