Title
Low latency via redundancy
Abstract
Low latency is critical for interactive networked applications. But while we know how to scale systems to increase capacity, reducing latency --- especially the tail of the latency distribution --- can be much more difficult. In this paper, we argue that the use of redundancy is an effective way to convert extra capacity into reduced latency. By initiating redundant operations across diverse resources and using the first result which completes, redundancy improves a system's latency even under exceptional conditions. We study the tradeoff with added system utilization, characterizing the situations in which replicating all tasks reduces mean latency. We then demonstrate empirically that replicating all operations can result in significant mean and tail latency reduction in real-world systems including DNS queries, database servers, and packet forwarding within networks.
Year
DOI
Venue
2013
10.1145/2535372.2535392
CoNEXT
Keywords
DocType
Volume
real-world system,dns query,low latency,added system utilization,reduced latency,tail latency reduction,mean latency,significant mean,latency distribution,extra capacity,latency,performance,reliability
Journal
abs/1306.3707
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
37
1.38
20
Authors
6
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Ashish Vulimiri11878.44
P. Brighten Godfrey22519145.37
Radhika Mittal330514.84
Justine Sherry450526.77
Sylvia Ratnasamy59566869.07
Scott Shenker6298922677.04