Replic8: Location-Aware Data Replication for High Availability in Ubiquitous Environments

File replication for uninterrupted availability is affected by the localised nature of network failures, particularly in ubiquitous, mobile environments; nearby nodes often get disconnected together, as a result of switching equipment faults, or of local wireless network unavailability – for instance, failure of a base station, or loss of network connectivity when a train enters a tunnel. In this paper we propose replic8, a substrate for location-aware file replication, mitigating the effect of localised network failures by storing replicas at network locations selected for being far away. We demonstrate that, compared to storage of replicas at random network locations, replic8 achieves high data availability, and requires lower numbers of replicas to maintain that.