Title: Autonomic load balancing for M2M communication with long-polling

Authors: Shinji Kitagami; Yosuke Kaneko; Ryozo Kiyohara; Takuo Suganuma

Addresses: Information Technology R&D Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, 5-1-1 Ofuna, Kamakura-City 247-8501, Japan; Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Katahira 2-1-1, Aoba-ku, Sendai-City 980-8577, Japan ' Information Technology R&D Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, 5-1-1 Ofuna, Kamakura-City 247-8501, Japan ' Department of Information and Computer Sciences, Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Shimo-ogino 1030, Atsugi-City 243-0292, Japan ' Cyberscience Center/Graduate School of Information Sciences, Tohoku University, Katahira 2-1-1, Aoba-ku, Sendai-City 980-8577, Japan

Abstract: In a machine-to-machine (M2M) service system that connects devices to the internet and which provides various remote services, long-polling communication is effective as a communication protocol that simultaneously satisfies requirements of both security and immediacy. It sustains a communication session among devices and servers for a definite period. For this reason, when a medium server for load balancing is introduced into a large-scale M2M service system, it might cause a performance bottleneck. In this paper, we propose an autonomic control method to achieve load distribution and load levelling using only devices and servers, without introducing a medium server. In the proposed method, the device selects the server to connect the subsequent time based on server load information that the server sends to the device when long polling has timed out. In addition, this method achieves levelling of the server load by exchanging load indices among servers.

Keywords: machine-to-machine; M2M communication; long polling; local load balancing; global load balancing; security; immediacy; internet; remote services; autonomic control; load distribution; load levelling.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSSC.2013.051993

International Journal of Space-Based and Situated Computing, 2013 Vol.3 No.1, pp.45 - 54

Received: 22 Aug 2012
Accepted: 01 Oct 2012
Published online: 23 Aug 2014 *

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