Group membership in asynchronous distributed environments using logically ordered views
By: Shridhar B. Shukla, Devalla Raghuram
Contributors: Raghuram, Devalla; Naval Postgraduate School (U.S.). Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Publisher: Naval Postgraduate School; Available from National Technical Information Service
Published: 1992
Place of publication: Monterey, Calif; Springfield, Va
Language: eng
Number of pages: 22
Subjects: MESSAGE PROCESSING; DISTRIBUTED DATA PROCESSING; ASYNCHRONOUS COMPUTERS; COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS
Other titles: NPS-EC-92-009.
Description: A group membership protocol ensures agreement and consistent commit actions among      group members to maintain a sequence of identical group views in spite of continuous      changes, either voluntary or otherwise, in processors' membership status. In      asynchronous distributed environments, such consistency among group views must be      guaranteed using messages over a network which does not bound message delivery      times. Assuming a network that provides a reliable, FIFO channel between any pair of      processors, one approach to designing such a protocol is to centralize the responsibility to      detect changes, ensure agreement, and commit them consistently in a single manager      process. This approach is complicated by the fact that a protocol to elect a new manager      with a consistent membership proposal must be executed when the manager itself fails. In      this report, we present a membership protocol based on ordering of group members in a      logical ring that eliminates the need for such centralized responsibility. Agreement and      commit actions are token-based and the protocol ensures that no tokens are lost or      duplicated due to changes in membership. The cost of committing a change is 2n      point-to-point messages over FIFO channels where n is the group size. The protocol      correctness has been proven formally. Agreement, Asynchronous, Commit, Distributed,      Failure, Group Membership, Logical Ring, Reliable Multicast, Token.
Notes: Title from cover.

"NPS-EC-92-009."

"16 September 1992."

AD A256 697.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 21-22).

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