Beyond bloom filters: from approximate membership checks to approximate state machines

Many networking applications require fast state lookups in a concurrent state machine, which tracks the state of a large number of flows simultaneously. We consider the question of how to compactly represent such concurrent state machines. To achieve compactness, we consider data structures for Approximate Concurrent State Machines (ACSMs) that can return false positives, false negatives, or a “don’t know” response. We describe three techniques based on Bloom filters and hashing, and evaluate them using both theoretical analysis and simulation. Our analysis leads us to an extremely efficient hashing-based scheme with several parameters that can be chosen to trade off space, computation, and the impact of errors. Our hashing approach also yields a simple alternative structure with the same functionality as a counting Bloom filter that uses much less space. We show how ACSMs can be used for video congestion control. Using an ACSM, a router can implement sophisticated Active Qu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: SIGCOMM
• Authors: Flavio Bonomi, Michael Mitzenmacher, Rina Panigrahy, Sushil Singh, George Varghese
• Keywords: Approximate Concurrent State, Bloom filter, Concurrent State Machines, SIGCOMM 2006