A system for constructing configurable high-level protocols

Abstract

New distributed computing applications are driving the development of more specialized protocols, as well as demanding greater control over the communication substrate. Here, a network subsystem that supports modular, fine-grained construction of high-level protocols such as atomic multicast and group RPC is described. The approach is based on extending the standard hierarchical model of the x -kernel with composite protocols in which micro-protocol objects are composed within a standard runtime framework. Each micro-protocol realizes a separate semantic property, leading to a highly modular and configurable implementation. In contrast with similar systems, this approach provides finer granularity and more flexible inter-object communication. The design and prototype implementation runing on Mach are described. Performance results are also given for a micro-protocol suite implementing variants of group RPC.