A configurable membership service

Author

Hiltunen, Matti A. ; Schlichting, Richard D.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Comput. Sci., Arizona Univ., Tucson, AZ, USA

Volume

47

Issue

5

fYear

1998

fDate

5/1/1998 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

573

Lastpage

586

Abstract

A membership service is used to maintain information about which sites are functioning in a distributed system at any given time. Many such services have been defined, with each implementing a unique combination of properties that simplify the construction of higher levels of the system. Despite this wealth of possibilities, however, any given service typically realizes only one set of properties, which makes it difficult to tailor the service provided to the specific needs of the application. Here, a configurable membership service that addresses this problem is described. This service is based on decomposing membership into its constituent abstract properties and then implementing these properties as separate software modules called micro-protocols that can be configured together to produce a customized membership service. A prototype C++ implementation of the membership service for a simulated distributed environment is also described

Keywords

distributed processing; protocols; C++ implementation; communication protocols; configurable membership service; decomposing membership; distributed environment; distributed system; membership service; micro-protocols; modularity; networks; Application software; Communication networks; Computer Society; Concurrent computing; Context-aware services; Intersymbol interference; Joining processes; Protocols; Software prototyping; Virtual prototyping;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Computers, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9340

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/12.677244

Filename

677244