Reliable Communication in an Unreliable Environment. Revision
Ken Birman, Thomas Joseph · 1985
Abstract : We report on the design and correctness of a communication facility for a distributed computer system. The facility provides a variety of broadcast protocols, which are used to transmit messages reliably to sets of destination processes. These protocols attain high levels of concurrency while respecting application-specific ordering constraints. They also ensure that processes observe consistent orderings of events, including process failures and recoveries. A review of several uses for the protocols in a large fault-tolerant program illustrates the simplification of higher-level algorithms made possible by our approach.