Client-side selection of replicated web services: An empirical assessment

Replicating web services over physically distributed servers can offer client applications a number of QoS benefits, including higher availability and reduced response time. However, selecting the “best” service replica to invoke at the client-side is not a trivial task, as this requires taking into account factors such as local and external network conditions, and the servers’ current workload. This paper presents an empirical assessment of five representative client-side service selection policies for accessing replicated web services. The assessment measured the response time obtained with each of the five policies, at two different client configurations, when accessing a world-wide replicated service with four replicas located in three continents. The assessment’s results were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. In essence, the results show that, in addition to the QoS levels provided by the external network and the remote servers, characteristics of the local client environment can have a significant impact on the performance of some of the policies investigated. In this regard, the paper presents a set of guidelines to help application developers in identifying a server selection policy that best suits a particular service replication scenario.