Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences

Large-scale distributed simulations model the activities of thousands of entities interacting in a virtual environment simulated over wide area networks. Originally these systems used protocols which dictated that all entities broadcast messages about all activities, including remaining immobile or inactive, to all other entities, resulting in an explosion of incoming messages for all entities, most of which are of no interest. Using a filtering mechanism called Interest Management, some of these systems now allow entities to express interest in only the subset of information which is relevant to them. This paper surveys seven such systems, describing the purpose of the system, its scope, and the salient characteristics of it Interest Management scheme. I present the first taxonomy for such systems and classify the seven systems according to the taxonomy. The analysis of the classification points to potential areas of research in Interest Management.