The confirm before delivery technique for high speed data distribution

Describes a two-tier architecture for high-speed data distribution. The architecture consists of a database interface network which distributes information from a central database to a number of servers, and a user interface network which distributes information from the servers to the user terminals. The database interface network uses a technique similar to that of the Datacycle system, called the confirm-before-delivery technique, on a high-speed channel for data distribution. Data requested by users are filtered out by the servers and sent to the user terminals through the user interface network. A simple load-balancing scheme is used for equal and efficient sharing of load by the servers. The user interface network can be any conventional local area network for connecting the servers and the user terminals. A very tight upper bound on the mean response time is derived, and design examples are given