JXTA Messaging: Analysis of Feature-Performance Tradeoffs and Implications for System Design

With the rise of Peer-to-Peer and Grid infrastructures, there is a renewed interest in messaging systems. Among the numerous messaging solutions for large loosely coupled distributed environments, the communication and messaging system of the JXTA peer-to-peer platform is the richest in features. This paper presents a comprehensive performance analysis of the JXTA messaging system and its application to the system design scenarios. Several applicationlayer messaging abstractions are analyzed and compared. The results reveal the limiting factors and behaviors with respect to workload, network distance, peer group size, and message relays. The tradeoffs between features and performance are observed and discussed in the form of recommendations to developers dealing with common system design cases.