In our parlance, this would be an instantiation of Grid Network Service. One that enables some clever late-binding between services. -franco ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bernard Wong <bwong@cs.cornell.edu> Date: Nov 1, 2005 12:11 PM Subject: [e2e] Closestnode.com <http://Closestnode.com> announcement To: end2end-interest@postel.org Cc: Aleksandrs Slivkins <slivkins@cs.cornell.edu>, Emin Gun Sirer < egs@cs.cornell.edu> We are writing to announce closestnode.com <http://closestnode.com>, a free, non-commercial service that we have recently deployed for directing clients to servers and peers that are close to them. Closestnode.com <http://Closestnode.com> can be used for mapping clients to the closest DHT node, for selecting a nearby mirror a user can download content from, or for finding the closest game server a user can connect to in multiplayer online games. The service is very simple to use: You register a unique application name with us on the web (e.g. mycoolapp) and either link our library into your application or run our standalone program along your server nodes. Once that is done, any node performing a DNS lookup for mycoolapp.closestnode.com <http://mycoolapp.closestnode.com> will receive the IP address of the the closest (lowest latency) node to itself that is currently running the mycoolapp application. Closestnode.com <http://Closestnode.com> can be used to implement a generic anycast service. It supports hosts behind firewalls and NAT boxes. One caveat is that a cold lookup with unprimed caches may take up to a few hundred ms, so this system is best suited for distributed systems where sessions last a few seconds or more. More information, code and demos are available at http://www.closestnode.com. The system is an offshoot of recent research at Cornell university, described in the following paper: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/people/egs/papers/meridian-sigcomm05.pdf Don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions. Best, Bernard, Alex, Gun. -- http://www.francotravostino.name