Distributed object relocation protocol for wide area networks

When distributed object technology is used in a wide area network, an object may not be accessed efficiently, due to a large communication delay. For this problem, we have proposed a Replicated Object Relocation Protocol (RORP), where the replicated object is relocated to an intermediate site, considering the communication delay, the processing ability of the servers, the reference frequency of the objects, the time of object transmission, the domain and the limited number of replications. This paper overviews the protocol and discusses its performance through the implementation of a RORP prototype. We evaluate the client-oriented replication scheme by the amount of processing distributed to the clients, the intermediate sites and the servers. Then, the paper shows how RORP enables a reduction in the response time and the total network traffic, including control messages and object retrieval messages.