This paper is an expanded and revised version (with a different title) of the paper "The Changing Face of Technology in Distributed Systems" in Proceedings of the 4th IEEE Workshop on Future Trends in DCS, September 1993, Lisboa, Portugal.
This paper discusses a framework for group-oriented system structuring and programming in large-scale systems. By looking into a few distribution support aspects, it motivates the utility of groups at all system levels. It advances structuring principles and points to the emerging technologies that may support them. The paper focuses, among those, on large-scale internetworking and multiparticipant communication. It discusses how, in the authors' opinion, multipoint (group) communication, logical addressing, membership management, and topology protocols may be used to implement efficient and robust infrastructures for large-scale distribution.
Also available extended report (gzip postscript).