Summary: The Totem Single­Ring Ordering
and Membership Protocol
Y. AMIR, L. E. MOSER, P. M. MELLIAR­SMITH, D. A. AGARWAL, P. CIARFELLA
University of California, Santa Barbara
Fault­tolerant distributed systems are becoming more important but, in existing
systems, maintaining the consistency of replicated data is quite expensive. The
Totem single­ring protocol supports consistent concurrent operations by placing a
total order on broadcast messages. This total order is derived from the sequence
number in a token that circulates around a logical ring imposed on a set of processors
in a broadcast domain. The protocol handles reconfiguration of the system when
processors fail and restart or the network partitions and remerges. Extended virtual
synchrony ensures that processors deliver messages and configuration changes to
the application in a consistent total order system­wide. An effective flow control
mechanism enables the Totem single­ring protocol to achieve message ordering rates
significantly higher than the best prior total ordering protocols.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: C.2.1 [Computer­Communications Net­
works]: Network Architecture and Design---network communications; C.2.2 [Com­
puter Communication Networks]: Network Protocols---protocol architecture;
C.2.4 [Computer­Communication Networks]: Distributed Systems---network
operating systems; C.2.5 [Computer­Communication Networks]: Local

Source: Amir, Yair - Department of Computer Science, Johns Hopkins University
Hebrew University of Jerusalem - School of Computer Science and Engineering, Transis Project

Collections: Computer Technologies and Information Sciences; Mathematics