Using multicast communication for dynamic load balancing in local area networks

A multicast-based algorithm is proposed for load balancing in a local computer network. The ability of a host to make its membership known to a multicast group based on its workload makes it possible to send a transfer request only to those hosts which have lower workload than the host that wants to transfer a task. This reduces the overhead of load balancing because a host does not waste computational resources when it cannot accept a task. The authors use a simulation model to investigate the performance of the multicast based algorithm and compare it favorably to algorithms that use unicast (point-to-point) communication