Improving networks using group-based topologies

Communication network topology design needs to address several conflicting requirements, such as minimizing the overall network diameter, minimizing the infrastructure cost, minimizing management cost, maximizing load distribution and so on. Centralized, decentralized, and partially centralized networks have their respective benefits as well as several drawbacks. It is known that grouping nodes gives better performance to the group and to the whole system, thereby avoiding unnecessary message forwarding and additional overheads. This paper proposes a survey of group-based topologies. It shows their main issues and in which real environments they could be used. The improvement of the networks by using these kinds of topologies will also be discussed. We have split group-based topologies into two classes, planar and layered group-based topologies, and we will discuss existing group-based systems in both types. Highlighting one of the main aims of the paper, their comparison, benefits and drawbacks are presented. Finally, authors will describe two group-based topologies designed by them, one for planar group-based topologies and another for layered group-based topologies, and they will be compared with different previous works. We consider this work as a starting point for researchers on new group-based topologies.