Adaptive broadcast by fault-tolerant spanning tree switching

• Published in: Journal of parallel and distributed computing Vol. 70; no. 9; pp. 889 - 906
• Main Authors: Karmakar, Sushanta, Gupta, Arobinda
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Amsterdam Elsevier Inc 01.09.2010; Elsevier
• Subjects: Applied sciences; BFS tree; Broadcast; Broadcasting; Computer networks; Computer science; control theory; systems; Computer systems and distributed systems. User interface; Computer systems performance. Reliability; Crash failure; Crashes; DFS tree; Distributed protocol switching; Exact sciences and technology; Failure; Fault tolerance; Faults; Messages; Software; Switching; Trees; Distributed protocol switching; BFS tree; DFS tree; Crash failure; Broadcast; Adaptive algorithm; Fault tree; Adaptive system; Transmission protocol; Distributed system; Topology; Adaptive method; Fault tolerance; Message passing; User interface; Spanning tree; Distributed algorithm; User assistance; Fault tolerant system
• ISSN: 0743-7315; 1096-0848
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpdc.2010.04.003

Adaptation is a desirable requirement in a distributed system as it helps the system to perform efficiently under different environments. For many problems, more than one protocol exists, such that one protocol performs better in one environment while the other performs better in another. In such cases, adaptive distributed systems can be designed by dynamically switching between the protocols as the environment changes. Distributed protocol switching is also important for performance enhancement, or fault-tolerance of a distributed system. In this work, we illustrate distributed protocol switching by providing a distributed algorithm for adaptive broadcast that dynamically switches from a BFS tree to a DFS tree. The proposed switching algorithm can also handle arbitrary crash failures. It ensures that switching eventually terminates in spite of failures and the desired tree (DFS tree) results as the output. We also investigate the properties that can be guaranteed on the delivery of broadcast messages under specific failure conditions. We show that under no failure, each broadcast message is eventually correctly delivered to all the nodes in spite of switching. Under arbitrary crash fault, we ensure that switching eventually terminates with the desired tree as the broadcast topology. We also investigate the specific delivery guarantees that can be provided when a single crash fault happens, both during switching and when no switching is in progress.