Cocast: A coordinate-fusion based distributed network distance prediction anycast algorithm

According to the network-coordinate based network distance estimation problem in an Internet-wide environment, an anycast algorithm named Cocast for cooperative network coordinate estimation is presented. All peers join a structured Peer-to-Peer overlay, and any peer in the overlay, i.e., a requestor, may send a network coordinated anycast message, then the anycast message is forwarded to a set of peers in charge of network coordinate estimation, and each of these peers makes responses from a network coordinate to the requestor, finally the requestor gets a synthetical network coordinate. Based on three novel mechanisms, i.e., an anycast service to select peers for network coordinate estimation, a hierarchical network embedding mechanism to compute the network coordinates, and a coordinate-fusion sensor approach to filter malicious peers' fake-coordinate effects, Cocast owns a fast convergence speed in network coordinate estimation and is more stable. Simulation results confirm that Cocast is scalable, fast-convergent, incrementally accurate and resilient.