Patent ID: 8493978

Claim:
A method for a transmitting node in a telecommunications network, wherein data is distributed into one or more data storage groups (DSG), and wherein data related to a DSG is replicated into a plurality of data storage elements (DS) distributed along a system comprising one or more nodes of the network, the method comprising the steps of: establishing a bi-directional connection via a network interface of the transmitting node with a plurality of other nodes in a transport layer of the network; sending from the network interface messages to the plurality of other nodes comprising an operational state matrix (OSM), which includes information held by the transmitting node about the operational state of all the replicas of the DS of each DSG, wherein the operational state of a replica in an OSM comprises reachability information indicating, for each of the one or more DSGs: that it is absent in a node, or that it is hosted by a node, or that it is unreachable from a node; forming a list of the plurality of other nodes as having an answer pending with a processing unit of the transmitting node in a memory of the transmitting node; receiving at the network interface a message from at least some of the other nodes, each received message comprising an OSM including information held respectively by each of said other nodes about the operational state of all the replicas of the DS of each DSG, and which are interpreted by the processing unit as answer messages from the list of the plurality of other nodes to the messages sent in the sending step, and which indicates that an OSM information exchange with the plurality of the other nodes is complete; deciding with the processing unit a node hosting the master DS replica of each DSG based on a view of the world (VOW), which is derived based on the received OSMs, and which includes an accumulated set of OSMs with respect to each DSG on every node of the system; detecting with the processing unit changes in a VOW derived by the transmitting node with respect to each DSG on every node of the system; and sending from the network interface messages comprising changes in the VOW to the other nodes.