Title :
Understanding partitions and the `no partition´ assumption
Author :
Ricciardi, A. ; Schiper, Andrd ; Birman, Kenneth
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Cornell Univ., Ithaca, NY, USA
Abstract :
Discusses partitions in asynchronous message-passing systems. In such systems, slow processes and slow links can lead to virtual partitions that are indistinguishable from real ones. To overcome the impossibility of detecting crashed processes in an asynchronous system, the system model incorporates a failure suspector to detect (possibly erroneously) process failures. Based on failure suspicions, the authors give a definition of partitions that accounts for real partitions as well as virtual ones. It is shown that under certain assumptions about the process behavior, any incorrect failure suspicion inevitably partitions the system. It is then shown how to interpret the absence-of-partition assumption
Keywords :
message passing; system recovery; absence-of-partition assumption; asynchronous message-passing systems; asynchronous system; crashed processes; failure suspector; failure suspicions; no-partition assumption; process behavior; process failure detection; slow links; slow processes; virtual partitions; Broadcasting; Clocks; Computer crashes; Computer science; Contracts; Delay systems; Fault tolerance; Protocols; Safety;
Conference_Titel :
Distributed Computing Systems, 1993., Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on Future Trends of
Conference_Location :
Lisbon
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-4430-3
DOI :
10.1109/FTDCS.1993.344134