Brief Overview of .NET Remoting

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Brief Overview of .NET Remoting

• .NET Remoting is a Java RMI-like remote method
  invocation mechanism
• Infrastructure of .NET Remoting is highly
  customizable
• The ability of .NET Remoting can be easily
  extended by customization

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Streaming .NET Remoting

• Extend .NET Remoting to provide network streaming
  ability
• Keep the object-oriented characteristic of .NET
  Remoting
• Hide network communication details
• Provide the ability to communicate simultaneously
  with multiple supplying peers

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Streaming .NET Remoting

• Pushing
• Push streaming data from server to client
  automatically
• Forwarding
• Each client can forward streaming data to other
  client to reduce server load
• Aggregation
• Clients aggregate data from different servers to
  make it meaningful

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Pushing Mechanism

• Ordinary .NET Remoting
• Client need to actively pull data from server
• There is a round-trip latency caused by each pull

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Pushing Mechanism

• Pushing from server to Client
• Client passively receivedata from its buffer
• With pushing, we canreduce times of request
• Client need only to send 1 request containing
  the schedulea the beginning of thestreaming
  session

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Aggregation

• Clients schedule what and how servers should send
  at the beginning of a streaming session
• Clients should be capable of how to aggregate
  data from different servers

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Forwarding Mechanism

• When a client request for a specific stream in
  the network, other subscribers of the stream can
  forward to it
• Server load can be reduced

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Our Implementation
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Components

• Custom Proxy
• Inherits from RealProxy of .NET Remoting
• Intercepts method invocations from upper level
  and pass them to Streaming Controller
• Has the ability to create more than one Remoting
  connections

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Components

• Streaming Controller
• Receive Remoting messages intercepted by Custom
  Proxy
• Distribute method invocation messages to many
  servers in the network
• Schedule how servers should partition or process
  their data before sending
• Responsible for aggregation of data from lower
  layer

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Components

• Continuous Buffer
• Buffer data from upper layer
• Automatically push data from server-side to
  client-side
• Client retrieve data without make method calls
  every time

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Components

• Push Manager
• Push manager understands the schedule plan from
  the client
• Periodically loads streaming data by calling the
  remote object instance
• It will write data to continuous buffer to wait
  to be sent

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Progress

• What is done
• Basic prototype of Streaming .NET Remoting
• Pushing mechanism is supported
• TODO
• Aggregation
• Forwarding