Integration of P2P and clouds to support massively multiuser virtual environments

Massively Multiuser Virtual Environments (MMVEs) are attracting millions of players from all over the world. Currently used Client/Server infrastructures and technologies are reaching their limits of flexibility and scalability. We propose an approach that combines the technological advantages of two different paradigms, namely P2P networking and Cloud Computing. Our proposal leverages known P2P techniques like Virtual Nodes and consistent hashing, as well as separate overlays for different purposes, e.g. interest and object management. We propose combining these techniques with the definition of a specific role in the overlay for Cloud-based, trusted resources. This enables the distribution of the MMVE on top of a mix of Cloud and user resources. The solution outlined allows building key-value distributed storage systems that can resize at run-time (elasticity) and provide scalability and load balancing features to the MMVE platform. ©2010 IEEE.