Secure parallel file distribution through a streaming worm network

✍ Scribed by Michael J. Sheehan

• Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 299 KB
• Volume: 12
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1089-7089
• DOI: 10.1002/bltj.20229

✦ Synopsis

This paper introduces the novel concept of streaming worms and applies the concept to secure parallel file transfer. A streaming worm (sworm) is a powerful class of software that can replicate itself as well as a chunk of arbitrary payload code on a predetermined set of nodes in a network very quickly, while streaming data between all of the nodes in parallel. By harnessing the parallelism and scalability of sworms in a file distribution application, large gigabyte files can be efficiently and securely distributed to a large number of nodes over a Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network without congesting the network. But unlike traditional file transfer tools such as File Transfer Protocol (FTP), remote copy (RCP), or secure copy (SCP), the total sworm transfer time is relatively independent of the number of target nodes for large files. As such, this method of parallel file distribution is particularly useful when a large array or cluster of similar computers has to be quickly updated with a large amount of identical software or data.