Coarse-Grained Cloud Synchronization Mechanism Design May Lead to Severe Traffic Overuse  

作　　者：Zhenhua Li Zhi-Li Zhang Yafei Dai 

机构地区：[1]the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Peking University [2]the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

出　　处：《Tsinghua Science and Technology》2013年第3期286-297,共12页清华大学学报（自然科学版（英文版）

基　　金：supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61073015);the National Key Basic Research and Development (973) Program of China (No. 2011CB302305);National Key Projects of Science and Technology of China (No.2010ZX03004-001-03)

摘　　要：In recent years, cloud sync（hronization） services such as GoogleDrive and Dropbox have provided Internet users with convenient and reliable data storing/sharing functionality. The cloud synchronization mechanism （in particular, how to deliver the user-side data updates to the cloud） plays a critical role in cloud sync services because it greatly affects the cloud operation cost （in terms of sync traffic） and user experience （in terms of sync delay）. By comprehensively measuring tens of popular cloud sync services, we find that their cloud sync mechanisms differ greatly in sync performance and design granularity. Quite surprisingly, some very popular services （like GoogleDrive and 115 SyncDisk） utilize a quite coarse-grained cloud sync mechanism that may lead to severe traffic overuse. For example, updating 1-MB data may sometimes result in 260-MB sync traffic. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study of various cloud sync mechanisms by analyzing their respective pros and cons under different situations, unravel the pathological processes for their traffic overuse problems, and finally provide insights/solutions for better choosing/designing a cloud sync service.In recent years, cloud sync（hronization） services such as GoogleDrive and Dropbox have provided Internet users with convenient and reliable data storing/sharing functionality. The cloud synchronization mechanism （in particular, how to deliver the user-side data updates to the cloud） plays a critical role in cloud sync services because it greatly affects the cloud operation cost （in terms of sync traffic） and user experience （in terms of sync delay）. By comprehensively measuring tens of popular cloud sync services, we find that their cloud sync mechanisms differ greatly in sync performance and design granularity. Quite surprisingly, some very popular services （like GoogleDrive and 115 SyncDisk） utilize a quite coarse-grained cloud sync mechanism that may lead to severe traffic overuse. For example, updating 1-MB data may sometimes result in 260-MB sync traffic. In this paper, we conduct a comparative study of various cloud sync mechanisms by analyzing their respective pros and cons under different situations, unravel the pathological processes for their traffic overuse problems, and finally provide insights/solutions for better choosing/designing a cloud sync service.

关 键 词：cloud storage data synchronization operation cost user experience design granularity 

分 类 号：TP393.09[自动化与计算机技术—计算机应用技术]