Abstract
This paper presents an algorithm to implement point-topoint causal order message delivery in distributed systems which does not force the sender to wait and which does not piggyback control information (such as timestamps) on messages. The algorithm is based on a message transmission protocol using low-level acknowledgements between FIFO buffers. We show that on the one hand causal order can easily and efficiently be realized in that way, but that on the other hand the loss of knowledge—induced by not using dependency matrices as in previously known protocols—leads to a slight restriction with respect to the applicability of the new protocol. The advantages of our scheme, however, are obvious because it is non-blocking and the piggybacking of huge control information on messages is avoided. Furthermore, the new algorithm is easily implementable since many distributed systems and low-level transmission protocols already provide message buffers and explicit or implicit message acknowledgements.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Acharya A., Badrinath B., Recording Distributed Snapshots Based on Causal Order of Message Delivery. Information Processing Letters 44, 1992, pp. 317–321
Alagar S., Venkatesan S., An Optimal Algorithm for Distributed Snapshots with Causal Message Ordering. Information Processing Letters 50, 1994, pp. 311–316
Birman K., Joseph T., Reliable Communication in the Presence of Failures, ACM Trans. on Computer Systems 5, 1987, pp. 47–76
Birman K., van Renesse R. (eds.), Reliable Distributed Computing with the Isis Toolkit, IEEE Computer Society Press, 1994
Birman K., Schiper A., Stephenson P., Lightweight Causal and Atomic Group Multicast, ACM Trans. on Computer Systems, 9(3) (August 1991), 272–314
Charron-Bost B., Mattern F., Tel G., Synchronous, Asynchronous, and Causally Ordered Communication. Submitted to Distributed Computing, 1994
Fidge C., Timestamps in Message-Passing Systems that Preserve the Partial Ordering. Proc. 11th Autralian Computer Science Conf., University of Queensland, 1988, pp. 55–66
Kearns P., Koodalattupuram B., Immediate Ordered Service in Distributed Systems. Proc. 9th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Newport Beach, California, June 5–9, 1989, pp. 611–618
Lamport L., Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System. Comm. of the ACM 21 (7), 1978, pp. 558–565
Mattern F., Virtual Time and Global States of Distributed Systems. In: Cosnard M. et al. (eds.): Proc. Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms, Bonas, France, 1988, pp. 215–226. (Reprinted in: Z. Yang, T.A. Marsland (eds.), Global States and Time in Distributed Systems, IEEE, 1994, pp. 123–133)
Raynal M., Schiper A., Toueg S., The Causal Ordering Abstraction and a Simple Way to Implement it. Information Processing Letters 39, 1991, pp. 343–350
Schiper A., Eggli J., Sandoz A., A New Algorithm to Implement Causal Ordering. In: J.-C. Bermond, M. Raynal (eds.), Distributed Algorithms, Vol. 392 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer-Verlag, 1989, pp. 219–232
Schwarz R., Mattern F., Detecting Causal Relationships in Distributed Computations: In Search of the Holy Grail. Distributed Computing 7 (3), 1994, pp. 149–174
Tel G., Mattern F., The Derivation of Distributed Termination Detection Algorithms from Garbage Collection Schemes, ACM Trans. on Prog. Lang. Sys. 15 (1), 1993, pp. 1–35
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1995 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Mattern, F., Fünfrocken, S. (1995). A non-blocking lightweight implementation of causal order message delivery. In: Birman, K.P., Mattern, F., Schiper, A. (eds) Theory and Practice in Distributed Systems. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 938. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60042-6_14
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-60042-6_14
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-60042-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-49409-6
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive