Abstract:
Web servers rely on edge network devices
to perform a number of operations that directly affect
the experience of clients and web services. Distributing
web services across geographic locations owned and
configured by third parties is becoming increasingly
popular in dealing with high demands. Under the current
distributed model, a uniform configuration across
all sites is difficult to maintain, resulting in different
clients and service experience, which are dependent on
the local set-up. In this paper, we propose a model and
architecture that enable the owner of a web service to
maintain uniform configuration across all hosting sites.
The model enables the administrator of a web service to
write a single configuration script that is then executed
on all edge devices at all hosting sites. This is enabled by
deploying a new edge device architecture called Serviter.
Serviter enables safe sharing of devices through
strict partitioning and hardware abstraction thereby
facilitating interoperability among vendors.
