A Replica Selection Strategy Based On The Ant Algorithm

In data grid, a file may have many replicas, these copies are usually large in amount and possibly locate in distributed grid nodes. So it's critical for users to select the best replicas before transmission a file. Base on it, we designed the replica selection strategy after making a deep research into the ant algorithm and investigating the key factors that influence the performance of replica selection greatly. Then we modified and extended some main modules of OptorSim. The ant algorithm based replica selection strategy was added into it. Finally, we compare the new strategy with another replica selection algorithm using OptorSim. The evaluation demonstrates that this new ant algorithm can more accurately locate the best replicas which user needs, balance the overload of storage nodes and enhanced performance of the entire data grid.