``Assessing the Performance of Erasure Codes in the Wide-Area''

Technical Report UT-CS-04-536, University of Tennessee, November, 2004.

Available via anonymous ftp to cs.utk.edu in CS-04-536.pdf.

Abstract

The problem of efficiently retrieving a file that has been broken into blocks and distributed across the wide-area pervades applications that utilize Grid, peer-to-peer, and distributed file systems. While the use of erasure codes to improve the fault-tolerance and performance of wide-area file systems has been explored, there has been little work that assesses the performance and quantifies the impact of modifying various parameters. This paper performs such an assessment. We modify our previously defined framework for studying replication in the wide-area to include both Reed-Solomon and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) erasure codes. We then use this framework to assess the performance of erasure coding in three wide-area, distributed settings. We conclude that as the set size, encoding rate, type of encoding and the distribution change, performance reflects a trade-off between downloading time and decoding time.

PDF of the paper

Citation Information

• Plain Text:

  .techreport     cp:04:ape
  author          R. L. Collins and J. S. Plank
  title           Assessing the Performance of Erasure Codes in the Wide-Area
  number          UT-CS-04-536
  institution     University of Tennessee
  month           November
  year            2004
  where           http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~jplank/plank/papers/CS-04-536.html
  

• Bibtex:

  @TECHREPORT{cp:04:ape,
          author = "R. L. Collins and J. S. Plank",
          title = "Assessing the Performance of Erasure Codes in the Wide-Area",
          number = "UT-CS-04-536",
          institution = "University of Tennessee",
          month = "November",
          year = "2004",
          where = "http://web.eecs.utk.edu/~jplank/plank/papers/CS-04-536.html"
  }