A Taxonomy of Service Discovery Systems

Service discovery is a platform for network entities, whether hardware or software, to spontaneously self-configure and self-heal in a volatile environment. An in-depth understanding of the fundamentals of service discovery is essential for system architects to effectively execute pervasive and autonomous context-aware applications. We offer this understanding by clarifying some fundamental concepts and issues in service discovery; the evolution of service discovery in the context of distributed systems, the basic architectures and their variance and the different functionalities that contribute towards satisfying the self-configuring and self-healing properties of service discovery. We then proceed to show how service discovery fits into a system, by characterizing operational aspects. Subsequently, we describe how existing state of the art performs service discovery, in relation to the operational aspects and functionalities, and identify areas for future work.