Self-stabilizing Balls & Bins in Batches

2016

A fundamental problem in distributed computing is the distribution of requests to a set of uniform servers without a centralized controller. Classically, such problems are modelled as static balls into bins processes, where m balls (tasks) are to be distributed to n bins (servers). In a seminal work, [Azar et al.; JoC'99] proposed the sequential strategy Greedy[d] for n = m. When thrown, a ball queries the load of d random bins and is allocated to a least loaded of these. [Azar et al.; JoC'99] showed that d=2 yields an exponential improvement compared to d=1. [Berenbrink et al.; JoC'06] extended this to m ⇒ n, showing that the maximal load difference is independent of m for d=2 (in contrast…