The totem redundant ring protocol

Group communication protocols greatly simplify the design of fault-tolerant distributed systems. Most of those protocols focus on node redundancy rather than on network redundancy. The totem redundant ring protocol allows the use of multiple redundant local-area networks. The partial or total failure of a network remains transparent to the application processes. The distributed system remains operational while an administrator reacts to an alarm raised by the totem redundant ring protocol. The user can choose between active, passive and active-passive replication of the network.