Evaluating Load Balancing in Peer-to-Peer Resource Sharing Algorithms for Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are a promising area for thedeployment of new wireless communication and networkingtechnologies. In this paper, we address the problemof enabling effective peer-to-peer resource sharing in thistype ofnetworks. In particular, we consider the well-knownChord protocol for resource sharing in wired networks andthe recently proposed MeshChord specialization for wirelessmesh networks, and compare their performance undervarious network settings for what concerns total generatedtraffic and load balancing. Both iterative and recursive keylookup implementation in Chord/MeshChord are consideredin our extensive performance evaluation. The resultsconfirm superiority of MeshChord with respect to Chord,and show that recursive key lookup is to be preferred whenconsidering communication overhead, while similar degreeofload unbalancing is observed. However, recursive lookupimplementation reduces the efficacy of MeshChord crosslayerdesign with respect to the original Chord algorithm.MeshChord has also the advantage of reducing load unbalancingwith respect to Chord, although a moderate degreeof load unbalancing is still observed, leaving room for furtherimprovement ofthe MeshChord design.