xAMp: a Multi-primitive Group Communications Service
Luís Rodrigues and Paulo Veríssimo
From the Proceedings of the 11th Symposium On Reliable Distributed
Systems, Oct, 1992, Houston, Texas.
Abstract
The xAMp is a highly versatile group communications service aimed at
supporting the development of distributed applications, with different
dependability, functionality, and performance requirements. These
range from unreliable and non-ordered to atomic multicast, and are
enhanced by efficient group addressing and management support. The
basic protocols are synchronous, clock-less and designed to be used
over broadcast local-area networks, and portable to a number of them.
The functionality provided yields a reasonably complete solution to
the problem of reliable group communication.
Whilst other protocols exist that offer similar services, we follow a
new engineering approach by deriving all qualities of service from a
single basic procedure. Thus, their implementation shares data
structures, procedures, failure-recovery algorithms and group monitor
services, resulting in an highly integrated package.
Also available as
INESC AR/66-92 (gzip postscript).