Club theory of the Grid

Abstract

The Grid is a new type of resource sharing infrastructure. Due to software and hardware limitations, the service that a certain Grid can offer is finite, and so is the number of users it can accommodate. If the number of users is too small, much of the planned resources would be wasted. On the other hand, excessive loading due to too many users could substantially reduce the benefit enjoyed by each user and also the efficiency of the Grid service. Therefore, there are two main problems for Grid design. (1) How many users should the Grid serve so that each user can receive the maximum benefit? (2) To a certain group of users, how much resources should be invested so that the construction and maintenance of the Grid become viable? Based on the economic theory of clubs, this paper gives a quantitative analysis of the quasi-optimal number of users and amount of each resource by regarding Grid services and resources as club goods. Based on our assumptions on the system model, we deduce two preliminary results and verify them by experiments using GridFTP. These two results allow the users to run randomized algorithms to achieve better system performance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.