Title :
Measures of importance and symmetry in distributed systems
Author :
Neilsen, Mitchell L.
Author_Institution :
Dept. of Comput. Sci., Oklahoma State Univ., Stillwater, OK, USA
Abstract :
Quorum-based protocols can be formalized in terms of the data structures they use. These data structures, called quorum structures, include quorum sets, coteries, and bicoteries. In this paper, we present measures that can be used to determine the relative importance of each node in a quorum structure. By knowing the relative importance of each node in the system, it is possible to improve the overall system reliability by investing more effort on improving the reliability of important nodes. Secondly, such measures can be used to accurately define symmetry in a distributed system. A quorum structure is symmetrical, if all nodes are equally important. Finally, since several well known protocols are based on composition, we present simple recursive methods to compute the importance of nodes in composite quorum structures
Keywords :
computer network reliability; data structures; distributed processing; protocols; bicoteries; coteries; distributed systems; importance; overall system reliability; quorum based protocols; quorum sets; quorum structures; recursive methods; symmetry; Availability; Communication system control; Computer science; Data structures; Nominations and elections; Power measurement; Power system reliability; Protocols; Sections; Size measurement;
Conference_Titel :
Parallel and Distributed Processing, 1993. Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Dallas, TX
Print_ISBN :
0-8186-4222-X
DOI :
10.1109/SPDP.1993.395499
