Dissemination of address bindings in multi-substrate overlay networks

Self-organizing overlay networks have emerged as a new paradigm for providing network services. While most overlay networks are built over a single substrate network (mostly, the Internet), recently the construction of overlay networks over multiple heterogeneous substrate networks has received increased attention. Such networks seek to interconnect mobile or fixed devices using a diverse set of networking modalities. Here, a key challenge arises from the more complex address bindings, where a single logical identifier is bound to multiple substrate addresses. In this paper, we evaluate the design and inherent trade-offs of mechanisms for exchanging information on address bindings in a multi-substrate overlay network. The evaluation is done using measurement experiments of an overlay network software system. The measurement data provides insights into the scalability of dissemination methods. An important finding is that gossip-based address dissemination is less effective than an on-demand dissemination of address bindings.