[HGI-News] HGI-Seminar, Montag 12.03.07: Towards a paradigm for robust distributed systems

[Newsletter des Horst Görtz Instituts]

         Prof. Dr. Christian Scheideler, Universität München

             Montag 12. März 2007, 13:15 Uhr IC 4 / 39-41

          Towards a paradigm for robust distributed systems

There is a wealth of literature on distributed systems. Much of the
classical research in this field has focused on closed distributed
systems that are usually of fixed size though processing units may
fail and recover according to some stochastic or adversarial model.
Major research issues for these systems - correctness (in an asynchronous
environment), efficiency (in a quasi-synchronous environment) and
robustness (under adversarial behavior) - have usually been considered
in an isolated fashion by separate research communities.

With the rise of large, open and highly dynamic distributed systems
such as peer-to-peer systems, however, designs are needed that can
address all of the central issues above - correctness, efficiency and
robustness - at the same time under threats that have not been considered
before. One can get surprisingly far with the help of clever algorithmic
techniques but there appear to be limits that cannot be surpassed without
a fundamental change in the way the Internet works today. After giving
an overview of state-of-the-art algorithmic techniques in this area, we
will propose a new paradigm for distributed computing that, if adopted
in the Internet, would allow the design of scalable and robust distributed
systems that seem to be beyond reach in the current Internet. We will
discuss the changes necessary to adapt the current Internet to this
paradigm as well as implications for future operating systems.


_____________________________________________________________________________
Die Webseite des HGI-Seminars mit allen Informationen zu vergangenen und
zukünftigen Vorträgen: http://www.hgi.rub.de/deutsch/lehrangebot/seminar.html