A Cost–Benefit framework for online management of a metacomputing system

Managing a large collection of networked machines, with a series of incoming jobs, requires that the jobs be assigned to machines wisely. A new approach to this problem is presented, inspired by economic principles: the Cost–Benefit framework. This framework simplifies complex assignment and admission control decisions, and performs well in practice. We demonstrate this framework in the context of an Internet-wide market for computational services and verify its utility for a classic network of workstations.