64-bit Consistent Hashing for Balanced CDN Load Distribution
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Solution Overview
Problem
Content delivery networks (CDNs) face inefficiencies in request distribution, leading to unbalanced load across edge servers due to redundant caching and uneven request distribution, which reduces overall performance and increases resource utilization inefficiencies.
Innovation Solution
A proprietary consistent distribution scheme using two separate hashes, a 64-bit consistent distribution scheme, and a differentiated consistent distribution scheme to achieve a balanced load distribution across edge servers, ensuring even request distribution and mitigating the computational overhead of cryptographic hashes.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Device complexity
If round-robin distribution is used to distribute content requests across edge servers, then the distribution scheme is simple and computationally efficient, but the load distribution becomes unbalanced due to redundant caching and varying request resource consumption
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the content space into distinct partitions assigned to different edge servers using consistent hashing. Each server is responsible for a specific segment of the content namespace, ensuring that requests for the same content are consistently routed to the same server, thereby eliminating redundant caching while maintaining distribution simplicity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent changes the distribution parameter from simple round-robin indexing to consistent hashing based on content identifiers. This parameter change ensures that requests for the same content are always directed to the same edge server, achieving balanced load distribution without sacrificing computational efficiency.
2Reliability
If consistent distribution schemes like CARP are used to eliminate redundant caching, then cache efficiency improves, but request distribution remains uneven across edge servers
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by assigning different content partitions to different edge servers based on consistent hashing. Each server optimizes its local cache for its assigned content segment, improving cache efficiency while the overall system achieves balanced request distribution through the consistent hashing mechanism.
3Productivity
If cryptographic hashes are used for consistent distribution, then request distribution evenness improves, but computational overhead increases significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent uses simplified consistent hashing algorithms that are computationally lighter than cryptographic hashes. These simplified hash functions provide sufficient distribution evenness while consuming significantly less computational resources, effectively replacing expensive cryptographic operations with cheaper alternatives.
Data Source
AI summary
Some embodiments provide a proprietary 64-bit consistent distribution scheme that preserves the efficiencies of CARP while providing a significantly more balanced distribution of requests that is on par with schemes reliant on computationally expensive cryptographic hashes. The scheme performs hashing of requested URLs and identifiers of available servers over a 64-bit space while optimizing the hashing to remove computationally expensive operations. Some embodiments provide a variant of the scheme to provide a differentiated distribution on the basis of one or more differentiating factors. A first variant utilizes load factor values to adjust the resulting hashes and to produce a first distribution of differentiated content that varies from a second distribution of undifferentiated content. A second variant identifies requests for differentiated content from requests for undifferentiated content and utilizes a first scheme to distribute the differentiated content and a second altered scheme to distribute the undifferentiated content.