Using Tailored Failure Suspectors to Support Distributed Cooperative Applications

F. Cosquer, L. Rodrigues, and P. Veríssimo

Selected sections of this report were published in the Proceedings of the 7th IASTED/ISMM International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing and Systems, Washington (DC), USA, October 1995.

Abstract

This paper presents an approach to effectively support cooperative applications using tailored failure suspectors. Using a group communication subsystem, it is shown how failure suspectors can be configured to model the requirements/semantics of cooperative applications thus avoiding ad-hoc system decisions. This approach is highly relevant in the context of large scale distributed systems like the Internet, where communication high variance and unpredictable delays increase the probability of incorrect failure detection. Applications are presented illustrating how failure suspectors are configured and possibly combined with new feedback techniques in order to implement more powerful cooperative environments.

Also available extended report (gzip postscript), (pdf) .


Luís Rodrigues