Michel Raynal - Böcker

This book presents the most important fault-tolerant distributed programming abstractions and their associated distributed algorithms, in particular in terms of reliable communication and agreement, which lie at the heart of nearly all distributed applications.

Understanding distributed computing is not an easy task. This is due to the many facets of uncertainty one has to cope with and master in order to produce correct distributed software. Considering the uncertainty created by asynchrony and process crash failures in the context of message-passing systems, the book focuses on the main abstractions that one has to understand and master in order to be able to produce software with guaranteed properties. These fundamental abstractions are communication abstractions that allow the processes to communicate consistently (namely the register abstraction and the reliable broadcast abstraction), and the consensus agreement abstractions that allows them to cooperate despite failures. As they give a precise meaning to the words "communicate" and "agree" despite asynchrony and failures, these abstractions allow distributed programs to be designed with properties that can be stated and proved. Impossibility results are associated with these abstractions. Hence, in order to circumvent these impossibilities, the book relies on the failure detector approach, and, consequently, that approach to fault-tolerance is central to the book. Table of Contents: List of Figures / The Atomic Register Abstraction / Implementing an Atomic Register in a Crash-Prone Asynchronous System / The Uniform Reliable Broadcast Abstraction / Uniform Reliable Broadcast Abstraction Despite Unreliable Channels / The Consensus Abstraction / Consensus Algorithms for Asynchronous Systems Enriched with Various Failure Detectors / Constructing Failure Detectors

Understanding distributed computing is not an easy task. This is due to the many facets of uncertainty one has to cope with and master in order to produce correct distributed software. A previous book Communication and Agreement Abstraction for Fault-tolerant Asynchronous Distributed Systems (published by Morgan & Claypool, 2010) was devoted to the problems created by crash failures in asynchronous message-passing systems. The present book focuses on the way to cope with the uncertainty created by process failures (crash, omission failures and Byzantine behavior) in synchronous message-passing systems (i.e., systems whose progress is governed by the passage of time). To that end, the book considers fundamental problems that distributed synchronous processes have to solve. These fundamental problems concern agreement among processes (if processes are unable to agree in one way or another in presence of failures, no non-trivial problem can be solved). They are consensus, interactiveconsistency, k-set agreement and non-blocking atomic commit. Being able to solve these basic problems efficiently with provable guarantees allows applications designers to give a precise meaning to the words ""cooperate"" and ""agree"" despite failures, and write distributed synchronous programs with properties that can be stated and proved. Hence, the aim of the book is to present a comprehensive view of agreement problems, algorithms that solve them and associated computability bounds in synchronous message-passing distributed systems. Table of Contents: List of Figures / Synchronous Model, Failure Models, and Agreement Problems / Consensus and Interactive Consistency in the Crash Failure Model / Expedite Decision in the Crash Failure Model / Simultaneous Consensus Despite Crash Failures / From Consensus to k-Set Agreement / Non-Blocking Atomic Commit in Presence of Crash Failures / k-Set Agreement Despite Omission Failures / Consensus Despite Byzantine Failures / Byzantine Consensusin Enriched Models

Theory is what remains true when technology is changing. So, it is important to know and master the basic concepts and the theoretical tools that underlie the design of the systems we are using today and the systems we will use tomorrow. This means that, given a computing model, we need to know what can be done and what cannot be done in that model. Considering systems built on top of an asynchronous read/write shared memory prone to process crashes, this monograph presents and develops the fundamental notions that are universal constructions, consensus numbers, distributed recursivity, power of the BG simulation, and what can be done when one has to cope with process anonymity and/or memory anonymity. Numerous distributed algorithms are presented, the aim of which is being to help the reader better understand the power and the subtleties of the notions that are presented. In addition, the reader can appreciate the simplicity and beauty of some of these algorithms.

This book constitutes the revised selected papers of the Second International Conference on Networked Systems, NETYS 2014, held in Marrakech, Morocco, in May 2014. The 20 full papers and the 6 short papers presented together with 2 keynotes were carefully reviewed and selected from 80 submissions. They address major topics such as multi-core architectures; concurrent and distributed algorithms; middleware environments; storage clusters; social networks; peer-to-peer networks; sensor networks; wireless and mobile networks; as well as privacy and security measures to protect such networked systems and data from attack and abuse.

This book presents the most important fault-tolerant distributed programming abstractions and their associated distributed algorithms, in particular in terms of reliable communication and agreement, which lie at the heart of nearly all distributed applications.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 12th International Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity, SIROCCO 2005, held in Mont Saint-Michel, France in May 2005.The 22 revised full papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 48 submissions. The papers address issues such as topics in distributed and parallel computing, information dissemination, communication complexity, interconnection networks, high speed networks, wireless networking, mobile computing, optical computing, and related areas.

This book includes the papers presented at the Third International Workshop on Distributed Algorithms organized at La Colle-sur-Loup, near Nice, France, September 26-28, 1989 which followed the first two successful international workshops in Ottawa (1985) and Amsterdam (1987). This workshop provided a forum for researchers and others interested in distributed algorithms on communication networks, graphs, and decentralized systems. The aim was to present recent research results, explore directions for future research, and identify common fundamental techniques that serve as building blocks in many distributed algorithms. Papers describe original results in all areas of distributed algorithms and their applications, including: distributed combinatorial algorithms, distributed graph algorithms, distributed algorithms for control and communication, distributed database techniques, distributed algorithms for decentralized systems, fail-safe and fault-tolerant distributed algorithms, distributed optimization algorithms, routing algorithms, design of network protocols, algorithms for transaction management, composition of distributed algorithms, and analysis of distributed algorithms.

This book constitutes the proceedings of the 9th International Workshop on Distributed Algorithms, WDAG '95, held in Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France in September 1995.Besides four invited contributions, 18 full revised research papers are presented, selected from a total of 48 submissions during a careful refereeing process. The papers document the progress achieved in the area since the predecessor workshop (LNCS 857); they are organized in sections on asynchronous systems, networks, shared memory, Byzantine failures, self-stabilization, and detection of properties.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2009, held in Nimes, France, in December 2009. The 23 full papers and 4 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 72 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on distributed scheduling, distributed robotics, fault and failure detection, wireless and social networks, synchronization, storage systems, distributed agreement, and distributed algorithms.

This book explains synchronization and the implementation of concurrent objects, presenting synchronization algorithms while also introducing the theory that underlies the implementation of concurrent objects in the presence of asynchrony and process crashes.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, ICDCN 2013, held in Mumbai, India, during January 3-6, 2013. The 27 revised full papers, 5 short papers presented together with 7 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 149 submissions. The papers cover topics such as distributed algorithms and concurrent data structures; integration of heterogeneous wireless and wired networks; distributed operating systems; internetworking protocols and internet applications; distributed database systems; mobile and pervasive computing, context-aware distributed systems; embedded distributed systems; next generation and converged network architectures; experiments and performance evaluation of distributed systems; overlay and peer-to-peer networks and services; fault-tolerance, reliability, and availability; home networking and services; multiprocessor and multi-core architectures and algorithms; resource management and quality of service; self-organization, self-stabilization, and autonomic computing; network security and privacy; high performance computing, grid computing, and cloud computing; energy-efficient networking and smart grids; security, cryptography, and game theory in distributed systems; sensor, PAN and ad-hoc networks; and traffic engineering, pricing, network management.

Distributed computing is at the heart of many applications. It arises as soon as one has to solve a problem in terms of entities -- such as processes, peers, processors, nodes, or agents -- that individually have only a partial knowledge of the many input parameters associated with the problem. In particular each entity cooperating towards the common goal cannot have an instantaneous knowledge of the current state of the other entities. Whereas parallel computing is mainly concerned with 'efficiency', and real-time computing is mainly concerned with 'on-time computing', distributed computing is mainly concerned with 'mastering uncertainty' created by issues such as the multiplicity of control flows, asynchronous communication, unstable behaviors, mobility, and dynamicity.  While some distributed algorithms consist of a few lines only, their behavior can be difficult to understand and their properties hard to state and prove. The aim of this book is to present in a comprehensive way the basic notions, concepts, and algorithms of distributed computing when the distributed entities cooperate by sending and receiving messages on top of an asynchronous network. The book is composed of seventeen chapters structured into six parts: distributed graph algorithms, in particular what makes them different from sequential or parallel algorithms; logical time and global states, the core of the book; mutual exclusion and resource allocation; high-level communication abstractions; distributed detection of properties; and distributed shared memory. The author establishes clear objectives per chapter and the content is supported throughout with illustrative examples, summaries, exercises, and annotated bibliographies. This book constitutes an introduction to distributed computing and is suitable for advanced undergraduate students or graduate students in computer science and computer engineering, graduate students in mathematics interested in distributed computing, and practitioners and engineers involved in the design and implementation of distributed applications. The reader should have a basic knowledge of algorithms and operating systems.

This book presents core concepts and algorithms of distributed computing, covering distributed graph algorithms; logical time and global states; mutual exclusion and resource allocation; high-level communication abstractions;distributed shared memory and more.