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Host selection through collective decision

Published:04 May 2012Publication History
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Abstract

In this article, we present a collective decision-making framework inspired by biological swarms and capable of supporting the emergence of a consensus within a population of agents in the absence of environment-mediated communication (stigmergy). Instead, amplification is the result of the variation of a confidence index, stored in individual memory and providing each agent with a statistical estimate of the current popularity of its preferred choice within the whole population. We explore the fundamental properties of our framework using a combination of analytical and numerical methods. We then use Monte Carlo simulation to investigate its applicability to host selection in the presence of multiple alternatives, a problem found in application migration scenarios. The advantages of self-organization and the use of statistically predictive methods in this context are also discussed.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems
      ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems  Volume 7, Issue 1
      Special section on formal methods in pervasive computing, pervasive adaptation, and self-adaptive systems: Models and algorithms
      April 2012
      365 pages
      ISSN:1556-4665
      EISSN:1556-4703
      DOI:10.1145/2168260
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2012 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 4 May 2012
      • Accepted: 1 June 2011
      • Revised: 1 July 2010
      • Received: 1 October 2009
      Published in taas Volume 7, Issue 1

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