Self-Tuning Traffic Shaping Without Central Manager
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing client-server systems face issues with request overload, leading to timeouts, and traditional traffic shaping solutions either create bottlenecks or consume significant bandwidth and management overhead, especially in environments with scarce resources.
Innovation Solution
A self-tuning traffic shaping system that adjusts request rates based on observed request-timeout percentages without a central traffic manager or intra-client communication, using decay functions to minimize the influence of throttling effects and optimize request timing.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If a typical traffic shaper is used to control request rate to the server, then the server overload is reduced, but a bottleneck and single point of failure is created
Solution Approach 1:
The centralized traffic shaper is segmented into distributed components residing in each client. Each client independently implements traffic shaping logic, eliminating the single point of failure and bottleneck associated with centralized control. The system divides the traffic management function across multiple independent nodes.
Solution Approach 2:
Each client autonomously monitors its own request timeout percentage and self-adjusts its request rate without external intervention. The client-service pair independently tunes traffic shaping parameters based on observed performance, eliminating dependency on centralized management infrastructure.
2Productivity
If intra-client communication is used to enable multiple clients to collaborate on traffic shaping, then traffic optimization is improved, but significant bandwidth and management overhead is consumed
Solution Approach 1:
The patent extracts the collaboration mechanism from explicit client-to-client communication and replaces it with indirect coordination through shared server observations. Each client independently processes public timeout percentage data from the server, eliminating the need for dedicated communication channels between clients and reducing bandwidth consumption.
Solution Approach 2:
The server's timeout percentage metric serves multiple functions simultaneously: it indicates server load status, provides feedback for client traffic shaping adjustments, and enables indirect client coordination. This single universal metric replaces multiple specialized communication channels.
3Productivity
If requests are sent at high rate to maximize server utilization, then productivity is improved, but timeout percentage increases indicating server overload
Solution Approach 1:
The system implements continuous feedback loops where clients monitor timeout percentages from server responses and dynamically adjust their request rates. When timeout percentage exceeds thresholds, clients reduce their request rate; when it remains low, clients can increase throughput. This closed-loop control balances productivity and reliability.
Solution Approach 2:
The traffic shaping parameters are made dynamic rather than static. Clients continuously adapt their request rates based on real-time timeout observations, allowing the system to respond to changing server conditions. The request rate automatically scales with server capacity, maximizing productivity while preventing overload.
Data Source
AI summary
One embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates self-tuning traffic shaping without a central traffic manager. During operation, the system sends one or more requests from a client to a server over a specified period of time. Next, the system receives one or more responses to the requests from the server over the specified period of time. The system then determines a request-timeout percentage for the period of time. Finally, the system adjusts a rate at which requests are sent to the server based on the request-timeout percentage.