The dynamic behavior of a data dissemination protocol for network programming at scale

Abstract

To support network programming, we present Deluge, a reliable data dissemination protocol for propagating large data objects from one or more source nodes to many other nodes over a multihop, wireless sensor network. Deluge builds from prior work in density-aware, epidemic maintenance protocols. Using both a real-world deployment and simulation, we show that Deluge can reliably disseminate data to all nodes and characterize its overall performance. On Mica2-dot nodes, Deluge can push nearly 90 bytes/second, one-ninth the maximum transmission rate of the radio supported under TinyOS. Control messages are limited to 18% of all transmissions. At scale, the protocol exposes interesting propagation dynamics only hinted at by previous dissemination work. A simple model is also derived which describes the limits of data propagation in wireless networks. Finally, we argue that the rates obtained for dissemination are inherently lower than that for single path propagation. It appears very hard to significantly improve upon the rate obtained by Deluge and we identify establishing a tight lower bound as an open problem.