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U.S. Department of Energy
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Multicast communication in distributed algorithms

Thesis/Dissertation ·
OSTI ID:5563509

A name addressing based communications scheme for a distributed language is described. It provides message level communication, as opposed to remote procedure call, and an integrated unicast/multicast communication facility. New semantics for language level multicast are discussed. The design of the communication scheme is oriented to the needs of low level algorithms that may be used in a distributed operating system to support resource allocation or to enhance reliability. Distributed algorithms that implement the proposed communication scheme are presented. These algorithms exploit the physical broadcast facility provided by communication network architectures like the Ethernet. A protocol (MP) for implementing multicast in an internet environment is presented. A design to integrate MP in UNIX 4.2 is described. A process can send a message to a group of processes by using multicast sockets. Multicast sockets are supported by MP and have an identical interface to that of unicast sockets at the user level. An algorithm for implementing multicast groups is described. The algorithm correctly maintains group information in an environment in which processes can insert to and delete from a group concurrently.

Research Organization:
State Univ. of New York, Stony Brook (USA)
OSTI ID:
5563509
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English