Distributed Web Hosting via Partial Replication and Erasure Coding
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Solution Overview
Problem
Individual users face challenges in hosting web content due to limitations in commercial data centers and self-hosting options, including high costs, restricted storage and bandwidth, and unreliable content delivery, especially with peer-to-peer networks that struggle with large file sharing and slow retrieval speeds.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a distributed web hosting mechanism that uses partial replication of web content across multiple computing devices, where the relative importance of files is calculated to create subsets stored on multiple devices within a computer cluster, utilizing erasure coding to ensure fast and reliable retrieval without excessive storage or bandwidth requirements.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If web content is hosted on a commercial data center, then reliable server and bandwidth link is provided, but additional fees are required and storage/bandwidth are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the web content into multiple subsets and distributes them across multiple peer computers in a P2P network. Each peer stores only a portion of the total content, thereby increasing aggregate storage capacity without requiring any single computer to have large storage. This segmentation also distributes bandwidth requirements across multiple peers, resolving the contradiction between reliability and quantity of storage/bandwidth.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent enables ordinary peer computers to function as web hosting servers, making them multi-functional devices that can both consume and provide web content. This universality allows the system to leverage the storage and bandwidth resources of multiple everyday computers, effectively increasing total available resources without requiring specialized data center infrastructure.
2Quantity of substance
If web content is hosted on personal computer, then no additional fee and unlimited storage space are available, but content delivery is unreliable and bandwidth is insufficient
Solution Approach 1:
By segmenting content across multiple personal computers in a P2P network, the system maintains the advantage of unlimited storage space on individual machines while improving reliability through redundancy. If one peer is unavailable, content can still be retrieved from other peers, resolving the contradiction between unlimited storage and reliable delivery.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates multiple copies of content subsets across different peer computers. Each peer holds a copy of its assigned content subset, and the system tracks which peers have which content. This copying mechanism ensures that content remains accessible even if individual peers go offline, thereby improving delivery reliability while maintaining the unlimited storage benefit of personal computers.
3Reliability
If entire web content is replicated on multiple computers, then content availability is improved, but storage space and bandwidth requirements increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent divides the entire web content into multiple subsets and distributes these subsets across multiple peers. Each peer stores only one subset rather than a complete copy of all content. This segmentation dramatically reduces the storage requirement on each individual peer while maintaining content accessibility, as any requested subset can be retrieved from the peer that holds it.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent implements partial replication by storing only portions of the total content on each peer, rather than replicating the entire content set on every peer. This partial action approach achieves the reliability benefit of having content distributed across multiple machines without the excessive storage cost of full replication, resolving the contradiction between accessibility and storage capacity.
4Quantity of substance
If P2P network is used for file sharing, then cost-effective solution is achieved, but retrieval speed is slow and response time is excessive
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments web content into smaller subsets that can be transferred more quickly between peers. By dividing large content into smaller chunks distributed across multiple peers, the system enables parallel retrieval of multiple subsets simultaneously, thereby increasing overall retrieval speed while maintaining the cost-effective P2P architecture.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent performs preliminary actions by pre-segmenting and distributing content subsets to multiple peers before they are needed. This advance preparation ensures that when a user requests content, multiple subsets are already available at different peers, enabling faster parallel retrieval and reducing response time while maintaining cost effectiveness.
Data Source
AI summary
The mechanisms described herein are directed at hosting content of a web site on multiple computing devices. A relative importance for each file associated with the web site is calculated. This relative importance is used to calculate several subsets of the content which are distributed to several devices within a computer cluster, such as a server array, peer-to-peer network, and the like. The subsets may include coded messages created using an erasure coding scheme on packets containing portions of one or more files. Upon retrieving a file, a fixed number of distinct coded messages are retrieved from the devices based on the erasure coding scheme. The file is re-created with these distinct messages. Because multiple devices hold the content, the web site may be retrieved significantly faster and the reliability is increased without consuming a large amount of storage space or bandwidth of any one computing device.