Resource allocation is one of the challenges for self-management of large scale distributed applications running in a dynamic and heterogeneous environment. Considering Application Layer Networks (ALN) as a general term for such applications including computational Grids, Content Distribution Networks and P2P applications, the characteristics of the ALNs and the environment preclude an efficient resource allocation by a central instance. The approach we propose integrates ideas from decentralized economic models into the architecture of a resource allocation middleware, which allows the scalability towards the participant number and the robustness in very dynamic environments. At the same time, the pursuit of the participants for their individual goals should benefit the global optimization of the application. In this work, we describe the components of this middleware architecture and introduce an ongoing prototype.Peer Reviewe
