
Bee Dance Strategy Helps Servers Run More Sweetly - cstejerean
http://www.gatech.edu/news-room/release.php?id=1605
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MuddyMo
I enjoyed the article. I found it interesting, however, that this is based on
work that came out in 2004. Here is the link to Tovey's 2004 article, "The
Honeybee Algorithm":
[http://ormstomorrow.informs.org/archive/fall04/Tovey%20artic...](http://ormstomorrow.informs.org/archive/fall04/Tovey%20article.pdf)

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mattjaynes
The article is very verbose. They only answer the 'how' question at the very
end (burying the lead?). Apparently it's some kind of weighted work pool:

 _Tovey and Nakrani set to work translating the bee strategy for these idle
Internet servers. They developed a virtual "dance floor" for a network of
servers. When one server receives a user request for a certain Web site, an
internal advertisement (standing in a little less colorfully for the dance) is
placed on the dance floor to attract any available servers. The ad's duration
depends on the demand on the site and how much revenue its users may generate.
The longer an ad remains on the dance floor, the more power available servers
devote to serving the Web site requests advertised._

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chengmi
How does this differ from existing load balancing techniques? For example,
MediaTemple's GridService serves a collection of websites from one or more
clusters of servers. They claim to be Slashdot/Digg proof.

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MuddyMo
The Honeybee strategy sacrifices speed for reliability. Try selling that
strategy to a client!

