A scalable and efficient architecture for service discovery

With the increase in the number of mobile and distributed services throughout the Internet, locating nodes capable of initiating particular services, or those able to provide particular services or resources is becoming a critical issue. This paper presents a new architecture for service discovery and resource allocation. The architecture adopts a hierarchical tree structure for participating nodes distant from the Internet backbone, and uses a single peer-to-peer structure for service discovery at the root layer of the underlying tree structures. The key characteristics of the proposed architecture are optimal search for both distant and close services, minimal overhead traffic, scalability, robustness, and easier QoS support.