COMP90015 Distributed Systems Project II

• Multi-server broadcaster with an improved architecture and security protocals.
• Centralized load balancer managing the server load balancing, client register, login and redirection.
• Load balancer can optionally have mirrored backups for better stability.
• Support SSL protocal (compatible with plain connections for outgoing connection, but not incomming connection).

Server architecture

(registering    |--------|      |----------------------------------|
 / logging in)  |        |      |                  root            |    (logged in)
   client1------|        |      |                  /  \            |------client4
                |  load  |      |       broadcaster1  broadcaster2 |
   client2------|balancer|------|           /  \          /  \     |------client5
                |        |      | broadcaster3  ...    ...    ...  |
   client3------|        |      |     /  \                         |
                |        |      |  ...    ...                      |
                |--------|      |----------------------------------|

Prerequisites

• Eclipse

• JavaSE 8+

• Dependencies:

    commons-cli-1.3.1
    apache-log4j-2.6
    gson-2.6.2
  

Setup servers

• Run 'LoadBalancer.java' with an attribute '-lp ' to start a load balancer server.

• Run 'Server.java' with following attributes '-lp ' to start a root server. A secret will be returned can can be found in console. Same secret will be used to start other servers.

    -lp <local port number>
    -lh <local host name> (optional, 'localhost' by default)
    -lbp <load balancer port number>
    -lbh <load balancer host name>
    -s <secret>
  

• Run 'Server.java' with following attributes to start child broadcasters (note: each broadcast server can have 5 children, and 50 client connections at most):

    -lp <local port>
    -rp <remote port>
    -rh <remote host>
    -lh <local host name> (optional, 'localhost' by default)
    -lbp <load balancer port number>
    -lbh <load balancer host name>
    -s <secret>
  

Client register & login

• Start client: user can either start a client with attributes below, or type the same attributes in the window popped up.

    -u <user name>
    -rp <load balancer port number>
    -rh <load balancer host name>
    -s <client secret>
  

• Register: run 'Client.java', enter username, secret, remote host, and remote port number. Click 'register' button.

• Login with username and secret: enter username, secret, remote host, and remote port number. Click 'login' button.

• Anonymous login without register: run 'Client.java', click 'Anonymous login' button.

Broadcast activity message

• After successful login, a new GUI for broadcasting message will appear.
• Enter a sentence such as 'hello', there is no need to enter a Json format string.

File structures

../src/activitystreamer                           ---Main entries of client and server
../src/activitystreamer.client                    ---Client implementations
../src/activitystreamer.server.Broadcaster        ---Broadcast server implementations
../src/activitystreamer.server.LoadBalancer       ---Load balancer server implementations
../src/activitystreamer.util                      ---Helper functions and util classes
../src/activitystreamer.message                   ---Standardized message implementations
../Certificate                                    ---Certificate file for authentication