The use and run-time overhead of Corba in MSHN project

Abstract

The goal of the Management System for Heterogeneous Networks (MSHN) is to support the execution of multiple, disparate, adaptive applications in a dynamic, distributed heterogeneous environment. MSHN consists of multiple eventually replicated, distinct distributed components that themselves execute in a heterogeneous environment. This thesis answers the question: Is the performance of the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) sufficient to support MSHN's inter-component communication? This research focuses on the applicability of communication mechanisms from the CORBA 2.2 specification to MSHN. After a careful literature search, we identified four mechanisms for further examination: the Static Invocation Interface (SII), the Dynamic Invocation Interface (DII), the Typed Event Service and the Untyped Event Service. Our rationale for selecting these mechanisms includes scalability, flexibility, extensibility, portability, maintainability, and manageability for the MSHN system. We implemented a prototype of MSHN's communication infrastructure using these four mechanisms, and measured their run-time performance. The overhead added by CORBA for distributed component communication of MSHN system varied from a low of 10.6 milliseconds per service request to a high of 279.1 milliseconds per service request on UltraSparc10 boxes with Solaris 2.6 Operating System and connected via 100 Mbits/sec Ethernet. We therefore conclude that using CORBA mechanisms will not only substantially decrease the amount of time required to implement MSHN, but if used appropriately they will not substantially degrade performance.