Distributed Systems : Exercise 2

Exercise 2: Monday 8.11. or Thursday 11.11.

Sources: Tanenbaum & van Steen Ch 1, Ch 2 or Couloris & Dollimore & Kindberg Ch 1, Ch 2

Topics: Transparency, Fault Tolerance, Caching

1. Give an example of each transparency type. Use as examples

a) a distributed file system

b) printing service (a group of printers), which are intended for mobile-user applications.

Why is it not always a good idea to implement transparency?

 

2. a) What kinds of failure types can you expect in

  • a Local Area Network
  • UDP transport service
  • on the air link in GPRS?

b) How can you detect such failures and how can you mask them? Is it possible that the masking process leads to new failures?

 
3. The performance of a distributed system can be improved using caches and proxies.
a) How do these techniques affect the performance and scalability of the distributed system?
b) Under what circumstances are these techniques useful?
c) What problems can you encounter when using these techniques?
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