Group communication: From practice to theory

Abstract

Improving the dependability of computer systems is a critical and essential task. In this context, the paper surveys techniques that allow to achieve fault tolerance in distributed systems by replication. The main replication techniques are first explained. Then group communication is introduced as tho communication infrastructure that allows the implementation of the different replication techniques. Finally the difficulty of implementing group communication is discussed, and the most important algorithms are presented. © Springer-Vorlag Berlin Heidelberg 2006.