Internet Scale Overlay Hosting

Network overlays have become a popular tool for implementing Internet applications. While content-delivery networks provide the most prominent example of the commercial application of overlays [DI02, KO04], systems researchers have developed a variety of experimental overlay applications, demonstrating that the overlay approach can be an effective method for deploying a broad range of innovative systems [BH06, FR04,RH05, ST02]. Rising traffic volumes in overlay networks make the performance of overlay nodes an issue of growing importance. Currently, overlays nodes are constructed using general purpose servers, often organized into a cluster with a load-balancing switch acting as a front end. This paper explores an alternative approach that combines general purpose server blades and high performance Network Processor (NP) subsystems into an integrated architec-ture designed to support multiple applications concurrently.