Virtually-Synchronous Communication Based on a Weak Failure Suspector

Failure detectors (or, more accurately Failure Suspectors { FS) appear to be a fundamental service upon which to build fault-tolerant, distributed applications. This paper shows that a FS with very weak semantics (i.e. that delivers failure and recovery information in no speci c order) su ces to implement virtually-synchronous communication (VSC) in an asynchronous system subject to process crash failures and network partitions. The VSC paradigm is particularly useful in asynchronous systems and greatly simpli es building fault-tolerant applications that mask failures by replicating processes. We suggest a three-component architecture to implement virtuallysynchronous communication : 1) at the lowest level, the FS component on top of it, 2a) a component that de nes new views, and 2b) a component that reliably multicasts messages within a view.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: FTCS
• Authors: André Schiper, Aleta Ricciardi
• Keywords: Failure Detectors, FS Component, FTCS 1993, Process Crash Failures