Gossip-based networking for internet-scale distributed systems

Abstract

In the era of Internet-scale applications, an increasing number of services are distributed over pools of thousands to millions of networked computers. Along with the obvious advantages in performance and capacity, such a massive scale comes also with challenges. Continuous changes in the system become the norm rather than the exception, either because of inevitable hardware failures or merely due to standard maintenance and upgrading procedures. Rather than trying to impose rigid control on the massive pools of resources, we should equip Internet-scale applications with enough flexibility to work around inevitable faults. In that front, gossiping protocols have emerged as a promising component due to their highly desirable properties: self-healing, self-organizing, symmetric, immensely scalable, and simple. Through visiting a representative set of fundamental gossiping protocols, this paper provides insight on the principles that govern their behavior. By focusing on the rationale and incentives behind gossiping protocols, we introduce the reader to the alternative way of managing massive scale systems through gossiping, and we intrigue her or his interest to delve deeper into the subject by providing an extensive list of pointers. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.