Evaluation of intra-group optimistic data replication in P2P groupware systems

Fatos Xhafa, Alina-Diana Potlog, Evjola Spaho, Florin Pop, Valentin Cristea, Leonard Barolli

Abstract: Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing systems have become very popular during the last years because of their abil-ity to scale to a large number of users and efficient communication among peers. They can support complexcomputational processes, beyond simple file sharing, while offering advantages of decentralized distributedsystems. However, such systems may suffer from availability and reliability. To increase availability and reli-ability, and therefore, improve the perception of peers, yielding to fast response times and rich experience,data replication techniques are the foremost means in such systems. Indeed, in many P2P applications, forexample, in a groupware, documents generated along application life cycle can change over time. The needis then to efficiently replicate dynamic documents and data to support group processes and collaboration.In this paper, we propose a replication system for documents structured as XML files and evaluate it underdifferent scenarios. The proposed system has a super-peer architecture that provides fast consistency for latejoining peers. It uses optimistic replication techniques with propagating update operations from source todestination node in push mode. The system is suitable for asynchronous collaboration in online collaborativeteams accomplishing a common project in a P2P environment.