Locating Nearby Copies of Replicated Internet Servers

In this paper we consider the problem of choosing among a collection of replicated servers focusing on the question of how to make choices that segregate clientserver traffic according to network topology. We explore the cost and effectiveness of a variety of approaches ranging from those requiring routing layer support e.g. anycast to those that build location databases using application-level probe tools like traceroute. We uncover a number of tradeoffs between effectiveness network cost, ease of deployment, and portability across different types of networks. We performed our experiments using a simulation parametrized by a topology collected from 7 survey sites across the United States, exploring a global collection of Network Time Protocol servers.