3 FastReplica Algorithm

In this Section, we describe the formal problem definition and introduce the new algorithm FastReplica for replicating the large files in the Internet environment. In Section 3.2, we introduce a core (an induction step) of the algorithm, called FastReplica in the small, and demonstrate its work in the small-scale environment, where a set of nodes to which a file has to be replicated is rather small and limited, e.g. 10 - 30 nodes. In Section 3.3, we perform a preliminary analysis of FastReplica in the small and its potential performance benefits, and outline the configurations and network conditions when FastReplica may be inefficient. In Section 3.4, we describe the general, scalable algorithm, called FastReplica in the large, and demonstrate its work in the large-scale environment, where a set of nodes to which a file has to be replicated can be in a range of hundreds/thousands of nodes. In Section 3.5, we extend the FastReplica algorithm to be able to deal with node failures.