SENS: A Scalable and Expressive Naming System for Resource Information Retrieval

We have designed a scalable and expressive naming system called SENS, capable of retrieving information of computing and content resources distributed widely across the Internet through exact queries and multi-attribute range queries over resource names. Our system utilizes a descriptive naming scheme to name resources and a multi-dimensional resource ID space for message routing through an overlay network of name servers (NSs). The resource ID space is constructed on the overlay network based on CAN routing algorithm. Our novel mapping scheme between resource names and resource IDs preserves resource ID locality while still achieving good load balancing regarding resource information distribution. We also propose a multicast routing algorithm to deliver resource information and a broadcast routing algorithm to route query messages to corresponding NSs with small cost of message transmission. Our simulation results show that our system can achieve good routing performance and load balancing. key words: naming system, range query, DHT