Multimedia Resource Replication Strategy for a Pervasive Peer-to-Peer Environment

The computer world is experiencing a paradigm shift towards context-aware pervasive computing, where diverse computer devices communicate with each other through different network access technologies, and allow resource access based on user preferences. P2P computing is an area which will be affected by this new trend. In this paper, we proposed a resource replication strategy for context-aware P2P computing in a pervasive environment. The replication strategy takes an active approach through using the resource request rate as the primary metric to trigger the replication process, and then adaptively replicate resources into various configuration states according to the properties of peers (i.e., terminal capabilities and user preferences) and the size of peer clusters. Also, the strategy uses peer related information stored on super peers to determine which peers should be selected to perform adaptive replications and where the resulting replicas should be stored. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy reduces network delays while increasing resource hit rate in comparison to commercial super peer P2P systems and random replication strategies.