Exposed Buffer Architecture

TL;DR

This paper introduces Exposed Buffer Architecture, a layered distributed application model that improves deployment scalability by exposing lower layer topology and providing essential storage and processing services.

Contribution

It formalizes a layered system model and compares Exposed Buffer Architecture to traditional stacks, demonstrating its potential for greater deployment scalability.

Findings

Exposed Buffer Architecture offers better deployment scalability.

It exposes lower layer topology for flexible connectivity.

Provides minimal but essential storage and processing services.

Abstract

The Internet stack is not a complete description of the resources and services needed to implement distributed applications, as it only accounts for communication services and the protocols that are defined to deliver them. This paper presents an account of the current distributed application architecture using a formal model of strictly layered systems, meaning that services in any layer can only depend on services in the layer immediately below it. By mapping a more complete Internet-based application stack that includes necessary storage and processing resources to this formal model, we are able to apply the Hourglass Theorem in order to compare alternative approaches in terms of their "deployment scalability." In particular, we contrast the current distributed application stack with Exposed Buffer Architecture, which has a converged spanning layer that allows for less-than-complete communication connectivity (exposing lower layer topology), but which also offers weak storage and processing services. This comparison shows that Exposed Buffer Architecture can have deployment scalability greater than the current distributed application stack while also providing minimally requisite storage and processing services.