This document defines a proposed architecture, which can be used to provide highly available services. The way this is achieved is by using servers grouped into pools. Therefore, if a client wants to access a server pool, it will be able to use any of the servers in the server pool taking into account the server pool policy. Highly available services also put the same high reliability requirements upon the transport layer protocol beneath RSerPool - it must provide strong survivability in the face of network component failures. Supporting real time applications is another main focus of RSerPool which leads to requirements on the processing time needed.
Scalability is another important requirement.
A logical pointer to a pool. A server entity having registered to a pool. Tuexen et al. A logical pointer to a particular pool element in a pool, consisting of the name of the pool and a destination transport address of the pool element. A cohesive structure of pool names and relations that may be queried by an internal or external agent.