PeerSync: Accelerating Containerized Service Delivery at the Network Edge

TL;DR

PeerSync is a decentralized peer-to-peer system that accelerates container image distribution at the network edge by dynamically adapting to network conditions, significantly improving speed and reducing traffic.

Contribution

This paper introduces PeerSync, a novel decentralized system that optimizes container image distribution at the network edge through adaptive, network-aware mechanisms and automated peer discovery.

Findings

PeerSync achieves up to 2.72x speedup over baseline solutions.

It reduces cross-network traffic by over 90%.

Performance tested on large-scale emulations and physical devices.

Abstract

Efficient container image distribution is crucial for enabling machine learning inference at the network edge, where resource limitations and dynamic network conditions create significant challenges. In this paper, we present PeerSync, a decentralized P2P-based system designed to optimize image distribution in edge environments. PeerSync employs a popularity- and network-aware download engine that dynamically adapts to content popularity and real-time network conditions. PeerSync further integrates automated tracker election for rapid peer discovery and dynamic cache management for efficient storage utilization. We implement PeerSync with 8000+ lines of Rust code and test its performance extensively on both large-scale Docker-based emulations and physical edge devices. Experimental results show that PeerSync delivers a remarkable speed increase of 2.72$\times$, 1.79$\times$, and 1.28$\times$ compared to the Baseline solution, Dragonfly, and Kraken, respectively, while significantly reducing cross-network traffic by 90.72% under congested and varying network conditions.