Suporte à computação orientada aos grupos em sistemas distribuídos tolerantes a faltas.

Luís Rodrigues

PhD Thesis,

Instituto Superior Técnico, September, 1995.

Abstract

The dissertation contributes to the definition, design and implementation of a group technology platform capable of operating over large-scale networks. These networks differ from local-area networks by their limitations in terms of high latency, low reliability and vulnerability to partitions. These characteristics motivate the design of new services offering acceptable performance over these networks.

Most of today's large-scale networks are built of clusters of local-area networks interconnected by long-haul point-to-point links. To offer efficient group communication over this type of infra-structure, the dissertation suggests an hierarchical approach that combines protocols dedicated to local-area networks with protocols dedicated to large-scale networks. In the framework, the thesis extends and improves previous results in the area of local-area group communication. Additionally, new approaches for operation in large-scale are proposed, including algorithms to enforce causal and total order. Finally, to illustrate the use of these technologies, the thesis proposes a generic architecture to support remote invocation of replicated objects. The remote invocation protocol supports the use of different replication strategies for each object. It is believed that such a problem-oriented approach will be a key factor to offer the flexibility and efficiency required by future distributed applications.

Not available in Postscript format.

Luís Rodrigues