Hybrid ICN Protocol for Microservices Multicast
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Solution Overview
Problem
In distributed microservices environments, managing multiple unicast connections between producers and consumers is resource-intensive, leading to backpressure issues and inefficiencies, especially in many-to-many communication scenarios like publish-subscribe patterns.
Innovation Solution
A hybrid information centric network (hICN) transport protocol that is receiver-driven and content-aware, enabling a multicast pull-based channel between a producer and multiple consumers, allowing consumers to request frames as needed and reducing the need for separate connections, with data being stored in a forwarding cache for retrieval.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If unicast connections are used between producers and consumers in publish-subscribe patterns, then reliable data delivery is achieved, but resource utilization increases and backpressure issues occur
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple unicast connections into a single multicast connection. Instead of establishing separate unicast connections from each producer to each consumer, the system uses a single multicast connection that can deliver data to multiple consumers simultaneously, thereby reducing resource utilization while maintaining delivery reliability
Solution Approach 2:
The multicast connection serves multiple consumers simultaneously, making it a universal communication channel that replaces multiple specialized unicast connections. This multi-functional approach allows a single connection to fulfill the data delivery needs of multiple consumers, reducing overall resource consumption
2Adaptability or versatility
If unicast connections are used for many-to-many communication, then direct producer-consumer interaction is enabled, but device complexity increases due to managing multiple connections
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple individual connection management tasks into a single multicast connection management process. The producer sends data through one multicast connection that automatically reaches all consumers, eliminating the complexity of managing multiple separate unicast connections while preserving the flexibility of direct interaction
3Ease of operation
If third-party message brokers are used to manage unicast connections, then connection management is offloaded, but processing power and resources are still consumed to manage each unicast connection
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges the management of multiple unicast connections into a single multicast connection management task. Instead of the message broker having to manage and track each individual unicast connection, it only needs to manage one multicast connection, significantly reducing processing power consumption while maintaining ease of operation
Solution Approach 2:
The system uses data copying at the network level through multicast, where a single data copy is sent through the multicast connection and automatically distributed to all consumers. This eliminates the need for the message broker to individually manage and forward data through multiple unicast connections, reducing processing overhead
Data Source
AI summary
Content can be delivered by a producer service to one or more consumer services over an information centric network (“ICN”) by storing application frames in a forwarding cache of an ICN node. The consumer services may retrieve applications frames from the ICN node rather than from the producer service directly.