1st International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing

Research Article

Distributed floor control protocols for computer collaborative applications on overlay networks

  • @INPROCEEDINGS{10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651240,
        author={Shankar M. Banik and Sridhar Radhakrishnan and Tao Zheng and Chandra N. Sekharan},
        title={Distributed floor control protocols for computer collaborative applications on overlay networks},
        proceedings={1st International Conference on Collaborative Computing: Networking, Applications and Worksharing},
        publisher={IEEE},
        proceedings_a={COLLABORATECOM},
        year={2006},
        month={7},
        keywords={Access protocols  Application software  Collaboration  Communication channels  Communication system control  Computer applications  Computer networks  Distributed computing  Distributed control  Media Access Protocol},
        doi={10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651240}
    }
    
  • Shankar M. Banik
    Sridhar Radhakrishnan
    Tao Zheng
    Chandra N. Sekharan
    Year: 2006
    Distributed floor control protocols for computer collaborative applications on overlay networks
    COLLABORATECOM
    IEEE
    DOI: 10.1109/COLCOM.2005.1651240
Shankar M. Banik1,*, Sridhar Radhakrishnan1,*, Tao Zheng1,*, Chandra N. Sekharan2,*
  • 1: School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, 200 Felgar Street, EL Building, Norman, Oklahoma 73019
  • 2: Department of Computer Science, Loyola University at Chicago, 6525 N. Sheridan Road, Chicago, Illinois 60626
*Contact email: smbanik@ou.edu, sridhar@ou.edu, tao@ou.edu, chandra@cs.luc.edu

Abstract

Computer supported collaborative applications on overlay networks are gaining popularity among users who are geographically dispersed. Examples of these kinds of applications include video-conferencing, collaborative design and simulation, distance learning, and online games. One of the important issues in collaborative applications is floor control wherein the end-users coordinate among themselves to gain exclusive access to the communication channel. An end-user who wins the floor, sends message to all other participating end-users. In this paper, to solve the floor control problem we present an implementation and evaluation of ALOHA and distributed queue dual bus (DQDB) distributed MAC (medium access control) protocols on overlay networks. As an initial step in the implementation of these MAC protocols, we propose an algorithm to construct an efficient communication channel among the Network Service Nodes (NSNs) in the overlay network. We also show that our implementation scheme (first one among decentralized floor control protocols) preserves the causal ordering of messages. We compare the efficiencies of the proposed implementation of floor control protocols using an analytical model that is verified using extensive simulation experiments.