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Distributed Naming Services

Module A5

Distributed & Cloud Computing

Sheheryar Malik, Ph.D.

Distributed & Cloud Computing

Naming
• Names are used to uniquely identify entities, to refer to locations, to
share resources and more
• A name can be resolved to the entity it refers to
• Name resolution allows a process to access the named entity
• To resolve names, it is necessary to implement a naming system
• In a distributed system, the implementation of a naming system is
itself often distributed across multiple machines.
• The mechanism of this distribution plays a key role in the efficiency
and scalability of the naming system

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Names, Entity, Addresses, Identifiers

• Name
o string of bits for referring to an entity
• Entity
o An entity in a distributed system can be practically anything
o Entities are the things which can operated on
o E.g. Hosts, printers, files, processes, users, mailboxes, Web pages, …
o Access point vs address (name of an access point)
▪ An access point is a special kind of entity in a distributed system which gives an access to
another entity
▪ The name of an access point is called an address
▪ Names should be location-independent
▪ An entity can offer more than one access point

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Names, Entity, Addresses, Identifiers

• Identifier
o It is an unambiguous name
o Human friendly name
o An true identifier must has the following properties
▪ Each identifier refers to at most one entity
▪ Each entity is referred to by at most one identifier
▪ Is never re-used (an identifier always refers to the same entity)

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Naming Structure
• Unstructured Naming
o Simple solutions (broadcasting)
o Home-based approaches
o Distributed Hash Tables (structured P2P)
o Hierarchical location service

• Structured Naming

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Structured Naming

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Name Spaces
• A graph in which a leaf node represents a (named) entity
• A directory node is an entity that refers to other nodes
• A directory node contains a (directory) table of (edge label, node
identifier) pairs
• We can easily store all kinds of attributes in a node, describing
aspects of the entity the node represents
o Type of the entity
o An identifier for that entity
o Address of the entity’s location
o Nicknames

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Name Spaces

A general naming graph with a single root node

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Name Space in UNIX File System

The general organization of the UNIX file system implementation on a

logical disk of contiguous disk blocks

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Name Resolution
• Problem
o To resolve a name we need a directory node. How do we actually find that
(initial) node?
• Solution: Closure mechanism
o The mechanism to select the implicit context from which to start name
resolution
▪ www.cs.vu.nl: start at a DNS name server
▪ /home/steen/mbox: start at the local NFS file server
▪ 0031204447784: dial a phone number
▪ 130.37.24.8: route to the VU’s Web server

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Linking and Mounting

The concept of a symbolic link explained in a naming graph

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Linking and Mounting

• Information required to mount a foreign name space in a distributed
system
o The name of an access protocol
o The name of the server
o The name of the mounting point in the foreign name space

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Linking and Mounting

Mounting remote name spaces through a specific process protocol

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Linking and Mounting

Organization of the DEC Global Name Service

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Name Space Implementation

• Distribute the name resolution process as well as name space
management across multiple machines, by distributing nodes of the
naming graph
• Distinguish three levels
o Global level
▪ Consists of the high-level directory nodes
▪ Main aspect is that these directory nodes have to be jointly managed by different
administrations
o Administrational level
▪ Contains mid-level directory nodes that can be grouped in such a way that each group
can be assigned to a separate administration
o Managerial level
▪ Consists of low-level directory nodes within a single administration
▪ Main issue is effectively mapping directory nodes to local name servers

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Name Space Implementation

An example partitioning of the DNS name space, including Internet-accessible files, into three layers
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Name Space Implementation

Item Global Administrational Managerial

Geographical scale of network Worldwide Organization Department
Total number of nodes Few Many Vast numbers
Responsiveness to lookups Seconds Milliseconds Immediate
Update propagation Lazy Immediate Immediate
Number of replicas Many None or few None
Is client-side caching applied? Yes Yes Sometimes

A comparison between name servers for implementing nodes from a large-scale name space
partitioned into a global layer, as an administrational layer, and a managerial layer

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Implementation of Name Resolution

• Two methods to implement the name resolution
o Iterative name resolution
o Recursive name resolution

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Iterative Name Resolution

The principle of iterative name resolution

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Recursive Name Resolution

The principle of recursive name resolution

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Name Resolution Mechanism

Server for Receives and Returns to
Should resolve Looks up Passes to child
node caches requester
cs <ftp> #<ftp> -- -- #<ftp>
vu <cs,ftp> #<cs> <ftp> #<ftp> #<cs>
#<cs, ftp>
ni <vu,cs,ftp> #<vu> <cs,ftp> #<cs> #<vu>
#<cs,ftp> #<vu,cs>
#<vu,cs,ftp>
root <ni,vu,cs,ftp> #<nl> <vu,cs,ftp> #<vu> #<nl>
#<vu,cs> #<nl,vu>
#<vu,cs,ftp> #<nl,vu,cs>
#<nl,vu,cs,ftp>

Recursive name resolution of <nl, vu, cs, ftp>.

Name servers cache intermediate results for subsequent lookups

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Comparison b/w Name Resolution Implementations

The comparison between recursive and iterative name resolution with respect to
communication costs

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The DNS Name Space

Type of Associated
Description
record entity
SOA Zone Holds information on the represented zone
A Host Contains an IP address of the host this node represents
MX Domain Refers to a mail server to handle mail addressed to this node
SRV Domain Refers to a server handling a specific service
NS Zone Refers to a name server that implements the represented zone
CNAME Node Symbolic link with the primary name of the represented node
PTR Host Contains the canonical name of a host
HINFO Host Holds information on the host this node represents
TXT Any kind Contains any entity-specific information considered useful

The most important types of resource records forming the contents of nodes in
the DNS name space
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DNS Implementation

An excerpt from the DNS database for the zone cs.vu.nl

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DNS Implementation

An excerpt from the DNS database for the zone cs.vu.nl

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Internet DNS
• Address/name translation
o for hosts, routers, applications
• Hierarchical name space
o distributed database
• Distributed set of servers
o Application-level protocol
• Scalable (through hierarchy & caching)
• Replicated for reliability
• Requires administration

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DNS Example: Mail Address

User

[email protected]
MX for ics.forth.gr ?
Name Mail Transfer Agent
Server
139.91.157.50

139.91.157.50

TCP

139.91.157.50

IP

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Additional DNS-based services

• Host aliasing
o host with complicated name can have aliases
o relay1.west-coast.enterprise.com -> aliases: { enterprise.com,
www.enterprise.com}
• Mail server aliasing
o e-mail addresses need to be mnemonic
o [email protected], instead of [email protected]

• Load Distribution
o replicated web servers
▪ Content Distribution Networks (eg: Akamai)
▪ Busy sites such as cnn.com are replicated over multiple servers

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DNS Root Servers

• Contacted by local name server that can not resolve a name
• Root name server:
o contacts authoritative name server if name mapping not known
o gets mapping
o returns mapping to local name server

• 13 root name servers worldwide

o {a, b, c, … , m}.root-servers.org
o Critical part of the Internet infrastructure !

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DNS Root Servers Sites

• F: Internet Systems Consortium, Inc. Sites:
1. Ottawa, Toronto
2. San Jose, San Francisco, Los Angeles
3. New York City
4. Rome, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid, Munich
5. Sao Paulo
6. Beijing, Seoul, Taipei, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai
7. Moscow
8. Dubai
9. Brisbane, Auckland
10. Monterrey
11. Johannesburg
12. Tel Aviv
13. Jakarta

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