DCL: protocols and primitives for distributed and concurrent computing in networked environments

We present design and implementation strategies for providing general purpose distributed computing primitives on computer networks. This suite of primitives is intended to be a framework within which distributed and concurrent applications may be built in networked environments, in the absence of a distributed operating system. The proposed constructs are derived from typical application requirements, and include group communications, synchronization and recovery, and integrated distributed primitives such as mutual exclusion and consensus. We define an extensible suite of general purpose distributed computing primitives, discuss algorithms for their implementation, and present performance results and experiences