Dynamic load balancing in distributed heterogeneous systems under stationary and bursty traffics

A heterogeneous system consisting of a number of hosts connected by a local area network (LAN) is described. The focus is on load balancing and process migration policies. An algorithm that increases the output performance of the system using load balancing is proposed. The computer simulation is based on a sender-initiated load balancing scheme, and is tested for a number of decision thresholds. A wide range of transfer delays due to bandwidth is considered in the simulation. Another parameter that is considered in the scheme is the uncertainty of the queuing status of the remote nodes, due to the combined effects of the system dynamics and the nonzero time required in probing the queuing status of the remote stations. Results show that the balancing scheme is capable of improving the system performance over that of no balancing for a wide range of transfer delays.