COMMUNICATION IN DISTRIBUTED

2
SYSTEM

2.1 COMMUNICATION IN DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

The most important difference between a distributed system and a uniprocessor system
is the interprocess communication.

Interprocess communication (IPC) is a set of programming interfaces that allows a

programmer to coordinate activities among different program processes that can
run concurrently in an operating system.

 In a uniprocessor system, interprocess communication assumes the existence of

shared memory whereas in a distributed system, there‟s no shared memory, so the
entire nature of interprocess communication must be completely reframed from
scratch.
 All communication in distributed system is based on message passing.
 The processes run on different machines and they exchange information through
message passing.
 Successful distributed systems depend on communication models that hide or
simplify message passing.

2.2 SYSTEM MODELS

System models describe common properties and design choices for distributed system
in a single descriptive model. The system models of distributed systems are classified into the
following types:
2.2 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Physical models: It is the most explicit way in which to describe a system in terms
of hardware composition.
 Architectural models: They describe a system in terms of the computational and
communication tasks performed by its computational elements.
 Fundamental models: They examine individual aspects of a distributed system.
They are again classified based on some parameters as follows:

 Interaction models: This deals with the structure and sequencing of the
communication between the elements of the system
 Failure models: This deals with the ways in which a system may fail to
operate correctly
 Security models: This deals with the security measures implemented in the
system against attempts to interfere with its correct operation or to steal its
data.

2.2.1 Physical Models

A physical model is a representation of the underlying hardware elements of a

distributed system hides the details of the computer and networking technologies
employed.

There are many physical models available from the primitive baseline model to the
complex models that could handle cloud environments.

 Baseline physical model:

 This is a primitive model that describes the hardware or software components
located at networked computers.
 The communication and coordination of their activities is done by passing
messages.

 This is a minimal physical model of a distributed system.

 This model could be extended to a set of computer nodes interconnected by a

computer network for the required passing of messages.

 This model helps us to categorize the three generations of distributed systems.

 Early distributed systems:

 The period is in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

 This was developed after the emergence LAN.

 Distrubuted Systems 2.3

 These systems could support 10 to 100 nodes interconnected by a LAN.

 It has very limited internet connectivity and can support a small range of
services such as shared local printers and file servers.

 Individual systems were homogeneous, with poor quality of service.

 Internet-scale distributed systems:

 The period is from the 1990s after the growth of internet.

 The physical set up of distributed system is described as an extensible set of

nodes interconnected by a network of networks (the Internet).

 They incorporate large numbers of nodes and provide distributed system

services.

 The systems were heterogeneous which could adopt open standards.

 They had good QOS.

 Contemporary distributed systems:

 The nodes were desktop computers and therefore relatively static, discrete and
independent.

 Mobile computing has led to physical models with movable nodes. Service
discovery is of primary concern in these systems.

 The cloud computing and cluster architectures hassled to pools of nodes that
collectively provide a given service. This resulted in enormous number of
systems given the service.

 Distributed systems of systems:

The ultra large scale (ULS) distributed systems is defined as a complex system
consisting of a series of subsystems that are systems in their own right and that come
together to perform a particular task or tasks. Some important characteristics of these
systems include their

 very large size

 global geographical distribution

 operational and managerial independence of their member systems.

The main function of these systems arises from the interoperability between their
components.
2.4 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Example: Flood monitoring systems.

Parameter Early Systems Internet Scale ULS System

Scale Small Large Ultra Large
Heterogeneity Homogeneous Platform independent Supports many types
software and technologies. of architectures
Openness Systems are mostly Many open standards are The already existing
closed available standards are not able
to cope with complex
systems.
QOS Poor Significant QOS could still be
improved

2.2.2 Architectural Models

The architecture abstracts the functions of the individual components of the

distributed system.

This describes the components and their interrelationships to ensure the system is
reliable, manageable, adaptable and cost-effective. The different models are evaluated based
on the following criteria:
 architectural elements
 architectural patterns
 middleware platforms

2.2.2.1 Architectural elements

The following must be decided to build a distributed system:
 Communicating entities (objects, components and web services);
 Communication paradigms (inter process communication, remote invocation
and indirect communication);
 Roles responsibilities and placement
Communicating entities
The components that are communicating and how those entities communicate together
are dealt here. The following are some of the problem oriented entities:
 Distrubuted Systems 2.5

 Objects: They are used to implement object oriented approaches in distributed

systems. Objects are accessed through interfaces.
 Components: Components resemble objects and they offer problem-oriented
abstractions for building distributed systems. They are also accessed through
interfaces. The key difference between component and object is that a components
holds all the assumptions specified to other components and their interfaces in the
system. Components and objects are used to develop tightly coupled applications.
 Web services: Web services are closely related to objects and components. Web
services are integrated into the World Wide Web. They are partially defined by the
web-based technologies they adopt. Web services are generally viewed as
complete services that can be combined to achieve value-added services across
organizational boundaries.

Object Components Web services

Object oriented solution Problem oriented solution Problem oriented solution
The dependencies and The dependencies and They are integrated into the
assumptions of the interfaces assumptions of the all WWW.
holds only on the objects that interfaces holds on all the
act upon them. components in the system.
Tightly coupled services Tightly coupled services Complete service that could
also be made as a value added
service

Communication paradigms
There are three major modes of communication in distributed systems:
 Interprocess communication:
This is a low-level support for communication between processes in distributed
systems, including message-passing primitives. They have direct access to the API
offered by Internet protocols and support multicast communication.
 Remote invocation:
It is used in a distributed system and it is the calling of a remote operation,
procedure or method.
a) Request-reply protocols:
This is a message exchange pattern in which a requestor sends a request message
to a replier system which receives and processes the request, ultimately returning a
message in response. This is a simple, but powerful messaging pattern which
allows two applications to have a two-way conversation with one another over a
channel. This pattern is especially common in client–server architectures.
2.6 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

b) Remote procedure calls: Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a protocol that one
program can use to request a service from a program located in another computer
in a network without having to understand network details.
c) Remote method invocation: RMI (Remote Method Invocation) is a way that a
programmer can write object-oriented programming in which objects on different
computers can interact in a distributed network. This has the following two key
features:
 Space uncoupling: Senders do not need to know who they are sending to
 Time uncoupling: Senders and receivers do not need to exist at the same time
 Indirect communication
Key techniques for indirect communication include:
a) Group communication: Group communication is concerned with the delivery
of messages to a set of recipients and hence is a multiparty communication
paradigm supporting one-to-many communication. A group identifier uniquely
identifies the group. The recipients join the group and receive the messages.
Senders send messages to the group based on the group identifier and hence do
not need to know the recipients of the message.
b) Publish-subscribe systems: This is a messaging pattern where senders
of messages, called publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly
to specific receivers, called subscribers. Instead, published messages are
characterized into classes, without knowledge of what, subscribers there may
be. Similarly, subscribers express interest in one or more classes, and only
receive messages that are of interest, without knowledge of what, if any,
publishers there are. They offer one-to-many style of communication.
c) Message queues: They offer a point-to-point service whereby producer
processes can send messages to a specified queue and consumer processes can
receive messages from the queue or be notified of the arrival of new messages
in the queue. Queues therefore offer an indirection between the producer and
consumer processes.
d) Tuple spaces: The processes can place arbitrary items of structured data,
called tuples, in a persistent tuple space and other processes can either read or
remove such tuples from the tuple space by specifying patterns of interest. This
style of programming is known as generative communication.
e) Distributed shared memory: In computer architecture, distributed shared
memory (DSM) is a form of memory architecture where the (physically
separate) memories can be addressed as one (logically shared) address space.
Here, the term shared does not mean that there is a single centralized memory
but shared essentially means that the address space is shared (same physical
address on two processors refers to the same location in memory
 Distrubuted Systems 2.7

Roles and responsibilities

There are two types of architectures based on roles and responsibilities:

1) Client-server:
 The system is structured as a set of processes, called servers, that offer services
to the users, called clients.
 The client-server model is usually based on a simple request/reply protocol,
implemented with send/receive primitives or using remote procedure calls
(RPC) or remote method invocation (RMI).
 The client sends a request (invocation) message to the server asking for some
service; - the server does the work and returns a result (e.g. the data requested)
or an error code if the work could not be performed.
 A server can itself request services from other servers; thus, in this new
relation, the server itself acts like a client.

 Some problems with client-server are centralization of service resulting in poor

scaling, limited capacity of server bandwidth of network connecting the server.

Figure 2.1: Client server style

2) Peer-peer
 All processes (objects) play similar role.
 Processes (objects) interact without particular distinction between clients and
servers.
 The pattern of communication depends on the particular application.
 A large number of data objects are shared; any individual computer holds only
a small part of the application database.
2.8 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Processing and communication loads for access to objects are distributed

across many computers and access links.
 This is the most general and flexible model.

Figure 2.2: Peer-peer style

 Peer-to-Peer model distributes shared resources widely share computing and
communication loads.
 Problems with peer-to-peer are high complexity due to cleverly place
individual objects and there are large number of replicas.
Placement
Mapping of objects or services to the underlying physical distributed infrastructure is
considered here. The following points must be taken care while placing the objects: reliability,
communication pattern, load, QOS etc. The following are the placement strategies:
 Mapping of services to multiple servers
 The servers may partition the set of objects on which the service is based and
distribute those objects between themselves, or they may maintain replicated
copies of them on several hosts.
 The Web provides a common example of partitioned data in which each web
server manages its own set of resources. A user can employ a browser to access
a resource at any one of the servers.
 Caching
 A cache is a local store of recently used data objects that is closer to one client
or a particular set of clients than the objects themselves.
 When a new object is received from a server it is added to the local cache store,
replacing some existing objects if necessary.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.9

 When an object is needed by a client process, the caching service first checks
the cache and supplies the object from there if an up-to-date copy is available.
If not, an up-to-date copy is fetched.
 Caches may be co-located with each client or they may be located in a proxy
server that can be shared by several clients.

 Mobile code:
 Applets are a well-known and widely used example of mobile code.
 The user running a browser selects a link to an applet whose code is stored on a
web server; the code is downloaded to the browser and runs.
 They provide interactive response.

 Mobile agents:
 A mobile agent is a running program (including both code and data) that
travels from one computer to another in a network carrying out a task on
someone‟s behalf, such as collecting information, and eventually returning
with the results.
 A mobile agent is a complete program, code + data, that can work (relatively)
independently.
 The mobile agent can invoke local resources/data.
 A mobile agent may make many invocations to local resources at each site it
visit.
 Typical tasks of mobile agent includes: collect information , install/maintain
software on computers, compare prices from various vendors bay visiting their
sites etc.

 Mobile agents (like mobile code) are a potential security threat to the resources
in computers that they visit.

2.2.2.2 Architectural patterns

Architectural patterns are reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem
in software architecture within a given context. They are not complete solutions but rather
offer partial insights. The following are some of the common architectural patterns:

 Layering:
 In a layered approach, a complex system is partitioned into a number of
layers, with a given layer making use of the services offered by the layer
below.
2.10 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Figure 2.3: Layered Architecture

 A given layer is unaware of the implementation details, of other layers
beneath them.
 In terms of distributed systems, this equates to a vertical organization of
services into service layers.
 A distributed service can be provided by one or more server processes,
interacting with each other and with client processes in order to maintain a
consistent system-wide view of the service‟s resources.

 Tiered architecture
 Tiering is a technique to organize functionality of a given layer and place
this functionality into appropriate servers and, as a secondary
consideration, on to physical nodes.
 The two tiered architecture refers to client/server architectures in which the
user interface (presentation layer) runs on the client and the database
(data layer) is stored on the server. The actual application logic can run on
either the client or the server.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.11

Fig 2.4: Two and three tiered architectures

 The three tiered architecture has:
a) Presentation tier: This is the topmost level of the application. is
concerned with handling user interaction and updating the view of the
application as presented to the user;
b) Application tier (business logic, logic tier, or middle tier): The
logical tier is pulled out from the presentation tier and, as its own layer,
it controls an application‟s functionality by performing detailed
processing.
c) Data tier: The data tier includes the data persistence mechanisms
(database servers, file shares, etc.) and the data access layer that
encapsulates the persistence mechanisms and exposes the data.
 Thin clients
 In a thin-client model, all of the application processing and data
management is carried out on the server.
 The client is simply responsible for running the responsible for running the
presentation software.
 This is used when legacy systems are migrated to client server
architectures.
2.12 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The legacy system acts as a server in its own right with a graphical
interface implemented on a client.
 The major disadvantages of thin clients is that it places a heavy processing
load on both the server and the network and the delay due to operating
system latencies.
 The virtual network computing(VNC) has emerged to overcome the
disadvantages og thin clients.
 VNC is a type of remote-control software that makes it possible to control
another computer over a network connection.
 Keystrokes and mouseclicks are transmitted from one computer to another,
allowing technical support staff to manage a desktop, server, or other
networked device without being in the same physical location.
 Since all the application data and code is stored by a file server, the users
may migrate from one network computer to another. So VNC is of big use
in distributed systems.
 Other patterns
a) Proxy:
 This facilitates location transparency in remote procedure calls or remote
method invocation.
 A proxy is created in the local address space to represent the remote object
with same interface as the remote object.
 The programmer makes calls on this proxy object and he need not be aware
of the distributed nature of the interaction.
b) Brokerage:
 It is used to bring interoperability in potentially complex distributed
infrastructures.
 The service broker is meant to be a registry of services, and stores
information about what services are available and who may use them.

Fig 2.5: Web service with brokers

 Distrubuted Systems 2.13

c) Reflection:
 The Reflection architectural pattern provides a mechanism for changing
structure and behavior of software systems dynamically.
 It supports the modification of fundamental aspects, such as type structures
and function call mechanisms.
 In this pattern, an application is split into two parts:
1) Meta Level: This provides information about selected system
properties and makes the software self-aware.
2) Base level: This includes the application logic. Its implementation
builds on the meta level. Changes to information kept in the meta level
affect subsequent base-level behavior.
2 2.2.3 Associated middleware solutions

Middleware is a general term for software that serves to "glue together" separate,
often complex and already existing, programs.

Middleware provides a higher-level programming abstraction for the development of

distributed systems. Middleware makes it easier for software developers to perform
communication and input/output, so they can focus on the specific purpose of their
application. Middleware is the software that connects software components or enterprise
applications and it lies between the operating system and the applications on each side of a
distributed computer network. Middleware includes Web servers, application servers, content
management systems, and similar tools that support application development and delivery.

Categories of middleware
The following are some of the categories of middleware:
 Distributed Objects
The term distributed objects usually refers to software modules that are designed to
work together, but reside either in multiple computers connected via a network or
in different processes inside the same computer. One object sends a message to
another object in a remote machine or process to perform some task. The results
are sent back to the calling object.
 Distributed Components
A component is a reusable program building block that can be combined with
other components in the same or other computers in a distributed network to form
an application. Examples: a single button in a graphical user interface, a small
interest calculator, an interface to a database manager. Components can be
2.14 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

deployed on different servers in a network and communicate with each other for
needed services. A component runs within a context called a container .
Examples: pages on a Web site, Web browsers, and word processors.
 Publish subscriber model
Publish–subscribe is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called
publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers,
called subscribers. Instead, published messages are characterized into classes,
without knowledge of what, if any, subscribers there may be. Similarly,
subscribers express interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages that
are of interest, without knowledge of what publishers are there.
 Message Queues
Message queues provide an asynchronous communications protocol, meaning that
the sender and receiver of the message do not need to interact with the message
queue at the same time. Messages placed onto the queue are stored until the
recipient retrieves them. Message queues have implicit or explicit limits on the size
of data that may be transmitted in a single message and the number of messages
that may remain outstanding on the queue.
 Web services
A web service is a collection of open protocols and standards used for exchanging
data between applications or systems. Software applications written in various
programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to
exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to
inter-process communication on a single computer. This interoperability (e.g.,
between Java and Python, or Windows and Linux applications) is due to the use of
open standards.
 Peer to peer
Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application
architecture that partitions tasks or work load between peers. Peers are equally
privileged, equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-
to-peer network of nodes.
Advantages of middleware
 Real time information access among systems.
 Streamlines business processes and helps raise organizational efficiency.
 Maintains information integrity across multiple systems.
 It covers a wide range of software systems, including distributed Objects and
components, message-oriented communication, and mobile application support.
 Middleware is anything that helps developers create networked applications.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.15

Disadvantages of middleware
 Prohibitively high development costs.
 There are only few people with experience in the market place to develop and use
a middleware.

 There are only few satisfying standards.

 The tools are not good enough.
 Too many platforms to be covered.
 Middleware often threatens the real-time performance of a system.
 Middleware products are not very mature.

2.2.3 Fundamental Models

Fundamental Models are concerned with a formal description of the properties

that are common in all of the architectural models.

Models addressing time synchronization, message delays, failures, security issues are
addressed as:

 Interaction Model – deals with performance and the difficulty of setting of

time limits in a distributed system.

 Failure Model – specification of the faults that can be exhibited by processes

 Secure Model – discusses possible threats to processes and communication

channels.

The purpose of the fundamental model is to:

 make explicit all the relevant assumptions about the systems we are modelling.

 make generalizations (general purpose algorithms) concerning what is possible

or impossible with given assumptions.

2.2.3.1 Interaction model

 In this model the computations occurs within processes.

 The processes interact by passing messages to achieve communication

(information flow) and coordination (synchronization and ordering of activities)
between processes.
2.16 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The two significant factors affecting interacting processes in a distributed system

are:

1) Communication performance
2) Global notion of time.

Communication Performance
 The communication channel in can be implemented in a variety of ways in
distributed systems: Streams or through simple message passing over a network.
 The performance characteristics of a network are:
a) Latency: A delay between the start of a message‟s transmission from one
process to the beginning of reception by another.
b) Bandwidth: The total amount of information that can be transmitted over in a
given time. The communication channels using the same network, have to
share the available bandwidth.

c) Jitter: The variation in the time taken to deliver a series of messages. It is very
relevant to multimedia data.

Global Notion of time

 Each computer in a distributed system has its own internal clock, which can be
used by local processes to obtain the value of the current time.
 Any two processes running on different computers can associate timestamp with
their events.
 However, even if two processes read their clocks at the same time, their local
clocks may supply different time because the computer clock drifts from perfect
time and their drift rates differ from one another.
 Even if the clocks on all the computers in a distributed system are set to the same
time initially, their clocks would eventually vary quite significantly unless
corrections are applied.
 There are several techniques to correct time on computer clocks.
 One technique is to use radio receivers to get readings from GPS (Global
Positioning System) with accuracy about 1 microsecond.

Variants of Interaction model

 In a DS it is hard to set time limits on the time taken for process execution,
message delivery or clock drift. There are two models based on time stamp:
 Distrubuted Systems 2.17

 Synchronous DS
 This is practically hard to achieve in real life.
 In synchronous DS the time taken to execute a step of a process has known
lower and upper bounds.

 Each message transmitted over a channel is received within a known

bounded time.
 Each process has a local clock whose drift rate from real time has known
bound.

 Asynchronous DS
 There are no bounds on: process execution speeds, message transmission
delays and clock drift rates.

Event Modeling
 Event ordering is of major concern in DS.
 The concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is
examined, and is shown to define a partial ordering of the events.

 The execution of a system can be described in terms of events and their ordering
despite the lack of accurate clocks.
 Consider a mailing list with users X, Y, Z, and A.
 Due to independent delivery in message delivery, message may be delivered in
different order.
 If messages m1, m2, m3 carry their time t1, t2, t3, then they can be displayed to
users accordingly to their time ordering.
 The mail box is:

Item From Subject

23 Z Re: Meeting

24 X Meeting

26 Y Re: Meeting
2.18 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem
send receive receive
X
1 m1 4
m2
send
2 3 receive Physical
Y
receive time

send
Z
receive receive

m3 m1 m2
A
receive receive receive
t1 t2 t3
Fig 2.6: Ordering of events
2.2.3.2 Failure Model
In a DS, both processes and communication channels may fail – i.e., they may depart
from what is considered to be correct or desirable behavior. The following are the common
types of failures:
 Omission Failure

 Arbitrary Failure
 Timing Failure

a) Omission failure
Omission failures occur due to communication link failures. They are detected through
timeouts. They are classified as:

 Process omission failures

 Omission failures that occur due to process crash (i.e.) the execution of
the process could not continue.
 This is detected using timeouts.

 A fixed period of time is fixed for all the methods to complete its
execution. If the method takes time longer than the allowed time, a time
out has occurred.
 In an asynchronous system a timeout can indicate only that a process is
not responding.
 A process crash is called fail-stopif other processes can detect certainly
that the process has crashed.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.19

 Fail-stop behavior can be produced in a synchronous system if the

processes use timeouts to detect when other processes fail to respond and
messages are guaranteed to be delivered.

 Communication omission failures

 This occurs when the messages are dropped between sender and the
receiver.
 The message can be lost in sender buffer, receiver buffer or even in the
communication channel.

 The loss of messages between the sending process and the outgoing
message buffer is known as send omission failures.
 The loss of messages between the incoming message buffer and the
receiving process as receive-omission failures.

 The loss of messages in a channel is channel omission failure.

process p process q
send m receive

Communication channel
Outgoing message buffer Incoming message buffer

Fig 2.7: Communication between processes in a channel

b) Arbitrary failures (Byzantine failure):
 This includes all possible errors that could cause failure.
 Communication channels often suffer from arbitrary failures
 The following table gives an overview of the different failures and its
categories:

Class Affects Comments

Fail stop Process Process halts and remains halted. Other
processes may detect that this process has
halted.
Crash Process Process halts and remains halted. Other
processes may not detect that this process has
halted.
2.20 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Omission Channel A message inserted in an outgoing message

buffer never arrives at the other end‟s
incoming messagebuffer.
Send-omission Process A process completes a send operation but the
message is not put in its outgoing message
buffer.
Receiveomission Process A message is put in a process‟s incoming
messagebuffer, but that process does not
receive it.
Arbitrary Process Process/channel exhibits arbitrary behaviour:
or it may send/transmit arbitrary messages at
arbitrary times or commit omissions; a
channel
process may stop or take an incorrect step.
c) Timing failures
 Timing failures refer to a situation where the environment in which a system
operates does not behave as expected regarding the timing assumptions, that is,
the timing constraints are not met.
 Timing failures are applicable in synchronous distributed system where time
limits are set on process execution time, message delivery time and clock drift
rate.
 The following are the common failures withnrespect to timings:

Class Affects Comments

Clock Process Process‟s local clock exceeds the bounds on its rate of drift
from real time

Performance Process Process exceeds the bounds on the interval between two steps

Performance Channel A message‟s transmission takes longer than the stated bound.

Masking failures
 Each component in a distributed system is generally constructed from a collection
of other components. It is always possible to construct reliable services from
components that exhibit failures.
 A knowledge of failure characteristics of a component can enable a new service to
be designed to mask the failure of the components on which it depends.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.21

Reliability of one-to-one communication

The term reliable communication is defined in terms of validity and integrity.
 Validity: Any message in the outgoing message buffer is eventually delivered
to the incoming message buffer.
 Integrity: The message received is identical to one sent, and no messages are
delivered twice.
The threats to integrity come from two independent sources:
 Any protocol that retransmits messages but does not reject a message that
arrives twice.
 Malicious users that may inject spurious messages, replay old messages or
tamper with messages.
2.2.3.2 Security model

The security of a DS can be achieved by securing the processes and the channels
used in their interactions and by protecting the objects that they encapsulate against
unauthorized access.

Protection is described in terms of objects, although the concepts apply equally well to
resources of all types.

Protecting objects

Fig 2.8: Objects and Principals

 The server manages a collection of objects on behalf of some users.

 The users can run client programs that send invocations to the server to perform
operations on the objects.

 The server carries out the operation specified in each invocation and sends the
result to the client.
2.22 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 This uses use “access rights” that define who is allowed to perform operation on a
object.

 The server should verify the identity of the principal (user) behind each operation
and checking that they have sufficient access rights to perform the requested
operation on the particular object, rejecting those who do not.
 A principal is an authority that manages the access rights. The principal may be a
user or a process.

Securing processes and their interactions

 The messages send by the processes are exposed to attack because the network and
the communication service that they use are open.
 To model security threats, we postulate an enemy that is capable of sending any
process or reading/copying message between a pair of processes
 Threats form a potential enemy includes threats to processes, threats to
communication channels, and denial of service.

Fig: 2.9: Enemy

 Threats to processes:
 A process that is designed to handle incoming requests may receive a message
from any other process in the distributed system
 It cannot necessarily determine the identity of the sender.
 This lack of reliable knowledge of the source of a message is a threat to the
correct functioning of both servers and clients.
 Servers:
 Servers cannot necessarily determine the identity of the principal behind any
particular invocation.
 Without reliable knowledge of the sender‟s identity, a server cannot tell
whether to perform the operation or to reject it.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.23

 Clients:
 When a client receives the result of an invocation from a server, it cannot
necessarily tell whether the source of the result message is from the intended
server or from an enemy, perhaps „spoofing‟ the mail server.
 Thus the client could receive a result that was unrelated to the original
invocation, such as a false mail item (one that is not in the user‟s mailbox).
 Threats to communication channels:
 An enemy can copy, alter or inject messages as they travel across the network
and its intervening gateways.
 Such attacks present a threat to the privacy and integrity of information as it
travels over the network and to the integrity of the system.
 Defeating security threats
 Encryption and authentication are use to build secure channels.
 Each of the processes knows the identity of the principal on whose behalf the
other process is executing and can check their access rights before performing
an operation.
Other possible threats from an enemy
 Denial of service:
Denial of service (DoS) attack is an incident in which a user or organization is
deprived of the services of a resource they would normally expect to have. In a
distributed denial-of-service, large numbers of compromised systems (sometimes
called a botnet) attack a single target.
 Mobile code:
Mobile code is software transferred between systems, e.g. transferred across a
network, and executed on a local system without explicit installation by the
recipient. Mobile code raises new and interesting security problems for anyprocess
that receives and executes program code from elsewhere.
The uses of security models
The use of security techniques incurs processing and management costs. The
distributed systems faces threats from various points. The threat analysis demands the
construction of security models.
2.3 INTERPROCESS COMMUNICATION
Interprocess communication (IPC) is a set of programming interfaces that allow a
programmer to coordinate activities among different program processes that can
run concurrently in an operating system.
2.24 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

- IPC refers to exchange of data between two or more separate, independent

processes/threads.
- The operating systems provide facilities/resources for inter-process
communications (IPC), such as message queues, semaphores, and shared memory.
- Distributed computing systems make use of these facilities/resources to provide
application programming interface (API) which allows IPC to be programmed at a
higher level of abstraction. (e.g., send and receive)
- Distributed computing requires information to be exchanged among independent
processes.

2.3.1 The API’s for the Internet Protocols

Characteristics of IPC:

 Synchronous and asynchronous communication

 In the synchronous form of communication, the sending and receiving
processes synchronize at every message.
 In this case, both send and receive are blocking operations.
 In the asynchronous form of communication, the use of the send operation is
non blocking in that the sending process is allowed to proceed as soon as the
message has been copied to a local buffer, and the transmission of the message
proceeds in parallel with the sending process.
 The receive operation can have blocking and non-blocking variants.

 Message destinations
 The messages in the Internet protocols, messages are sent to (Internet address,
local port) pairs.
 A local port is a message destination with in a computer, specified as an
integer.
 A port has exactly one receiver but can have many senders.
 Processes may use multiple ports to receive messages.
 Any process that knows the number of a port can send a message to it.
 Client programs refer to services by name and use a name server or binder to
translate their names into server locations at runtime.
 This allows services to be relocated but not to migrate – that is, to be moved
while the system is running.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.25

 Reliability
 A point-to-point message service can be described as reliable if messages are
guaranteed to be delivered.
 A point-to-point message service can be described as unreliable if messages are
not guaranteed to be delivered in the face of even a single packet dropped or
lost.
 Ordering
 Some applications require that messages be delivered in the order in which
they were transmitted by the sender.
 The delivery of messages outof sender order is regarded as a failure by such
applications.
Sockets
A socket is one endpoint of a two-way communication link between two programs
running on the network.

Interprocess communication consists of transmitting a message between a socket in

one process and a socket in another process. The java API for interprocess communication in
the internet provides both datagram and stream communication. Both forms of
communication, UDP and TCP, use the socket abstraction, which provides and endpoint for
communication between processes. Interprocess communication consists of transmitting a
message between a socket in one process and a socket in another process. The two
communication patterns that are most commonly used in distributed programs:
 Client-Server communication
 The request and reply messages provide the basis for remote method
invocation (RMI) or remote procedure call (RPC).
 Group communication
 The same message is sent to several processes.

Fig 2.6: Sockets and ports

2.26 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

For a process to receive messages, its socket must be bound to a local port and one of
the Internet addresses of the computer on which it runs. Messages sent to a particular Internet
address and port number can be received only by a process whose socket is associated with
that Internet address and port number.

Java API for Internet addresses

 Java provides a class, InetAddress, that represents Internetaddresses.

 Users of this class refer to computers by Domain Name System (DNS) hostnames.
InetAddressaComputer = InetAddress.getByName("abc.ac.in");

UDP Datagram Communication

 The application program interface to UDP provides a message passing abstraction.

 Message passing is the simplest form of interprocess communication.

 API enables a sending process to transmit a single message to a receiving process.

 The independent packets containing theses messages are called datagrams.

 In the Java and UNIX APIs, the sender specifies the destination using a socket.

 A datagram is transmitted between processes when one process sends it and

another receives it.

 The following are the steps in socket communication:

o Creating a socket

o Binding a socket to a port and local Internet address

 A client binds to any free local port

 A server binds to a server port

 Receive() returns Internet address and port of sender, along with the message.

Issues in datagram communication:

 Message size:
 The receiving process needs to specify an fixed size array to receive a message.
 If the message is too big for the array, it is truncated.

 Any application requiring messages larger than the maximum must fragment
them.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.27

 Blocking:

 Sockets normally provide non-blocking sends and blocking receives for

datagram communication.

 The send() returns after delivering the message to theUDP and IP protocols.
These protocols are now responsible for transmitting the message to its
destination

 The message is placed in a queue for the socket that is bound to the destination
port.

 Messages are discarded atthe destination if no process has a socket bound to

the destination port.

 The receive()blocks until a datagram is received, unless a timeout has been set
on the socket.

 Timeouts:

 The receive() cannot wait indefinitely. This situation occurs when the sending
process may have crashed or the expected message may have been lost.

 To avoid this timeouts can be set on sockets.

 The timeouts must be much larger than the time required to transmit a
message.

 Receive from any:

 The receive() does not specify an origin for messages. This can get datagrams
addressed to its socket from any origin.

 The receive() returns the Internet address and local port of the sender, allowing
the recipient to check where the message came from.

 It is possible to connect a datagram socket to a particular remote port and

Internet address, in which case the socket is only able to send messages to and
receive messages from that address.

Failure model for UDP datagrams

UDP datagrams suffer from following failures:

 Omission failure: Messages may be dropped occasionally

 Ordering: Messages can be delivered out of order.

2.28 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Java API for UDP datagrams

The Java API provides datagram communication by two classes:
1. DatagramPacket
- It provides a constructor to make an array of bytes comprising:
• Message content
• Length of message
• Internet address
• Local port number
- It provides another similar constructor for receiving a message.
2. DatagramSocket
- This class supports sockets for sending and receiving UDP datagram.
- It provides a constructor with port number as argument.
- No-argument constructor is used to choose a free local port.
- DatagramSocket methods are:
1. send and receive:These methods are used for transmitting
datagrams between a pair of sockets.

Syntax:
send(packet);
receive();

2. setSoTimeout: This method allows a timeout to be set. With a

timeout set, the receive method will block for the time specified and
then throw an InterruptedIOException.

Syntax:
setSotimeout(time in seconds);
3. connect: This method is used for connecting to a particular remote
port and Internet address, in which case the socket is only able to
send messages to and receive messages from that address.

Syntax:
int connect(in sockfd, const structsockaddr *addr, socklen_taddrlen);
 Distrubuted Systems 2.29

Arrays of bytes Message Internet Port number

containing message length address

Fig 2.7: Datagram Packet

UDP Client server Communication
Client Program

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class UDPClient
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
DatagramSocketaSocket = null;
try {
aSocket = new DatagramSocket(); // Create an object for the datagram class
byte [] m = args[0].getBytes(); //Buffer to get data
InetAddressaHost = InetAddress.getByName(args[1]); // Get Inetaddress
intserverPort = 6789;
DatagramPacket request =
new DatagramPacket(m, m.length(), aHost, serverPort);
aSocket.send(request); //Sent the packet
byte[] buffer = new byte[1000];
DatagramPacket reply = new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length);
aSocket.receive(reply);
System.out.println("Reply: " + new String(reply.getData()));
}
catch (SocketException e){System.out.println("Socket: " + e.getMessage());
}
catch (IOException e){System.out.println("IO: " + e.getMessage());
}
2.30 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

finally
{
if(aSocket != null) aSocket.close();}
}
}

Server program
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class UDPServer
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
DatagramSocketaSocket = null;
try
{
aSocket = new DatagramSocket(6789);
byte[] buffer = new byte[1000];
while(true)
{
DatagramPacket request = new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length);
aSocket.receive(request);
DatagramPacket reply = new DatagramPacket(request.getData(),
request.getLength(), request.getAddress(), request.getPort());
aSocket.send(reply);
}
}
catch (SocketException e)
{
System.out.println("Socket: " + e.getMessage());
 Distrubuted Systems 2.31

}
catch (IOException e)
{
System.out.println("IO: " + e.getMessage());
}
finally
{
if (aSocket != null) aSocket.close();}
}
}

TCP stream Communication

The API to the TCP protocol provides the abstraction of a stream of bytes to be written
to or read from. The following features are hidden stream abstraction:
 Message sizes
 Lost messages
 Flow control
 Message destinations
Working of stream communication
 The pair of sockets in the client and server are connected by a pair of streams, one
in each direction. Thus each socket has an input stream and an output stream.
 One of the pair of processes can send information to the other by writing to its
output stream, and the other process obtains the information by reading from its
input stream.
 When an application closes a socket, this indicates that it will not write any more
data to its output stream. Any data in the output buffer is flushed to the other end
of the stream and put in the queue at the destination socket, with an indication that
the socket is closed.
 The process at the destination can read the data in the queue, but any further reads
after the queue is empty will result in an indication of end of stream.
 When a process exits or fails, all of its sockets are eventually closed and any
process attempting to communicate with it will discover that its connection has
been broken.
2.32 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

This form of stream communication has the following issues:

 Matching of data items: Two communicating processes need to agree as to
the contents of the data transmitted over a stream.
 Blocking: The process that writes data to a stream may be blocked by the TCP
flow-control mechanism if the socket at the other end is queuing as much data
as the protocol allows.
 Threads: When a server accepts a connection, it generally creates a new thread
in which to communicate with the new client. In an environment in which
threads are not provided, an alternative is to test whether input is available
from a stream before attempting to read it;
Java API for TCP streams
The Java interface to TCP streams is provided in the classes:
 ServerSocket: It is used by a server to create a socket at server port to listen
for connect requests from clients.
Syntax:
publicServerSocket(int port, InetAddress address) ;
 Socket: It is used by a pair of processes with a connection. The client uses a
constructor to create a socket and connect it to the remote host and port of a
server.It provides methods for accessing input and output streams associated
with a socket.
Syntax:
public Socket(InetAddress host, int port, InetAddresslocalAddress,
intlocalPort);

TCP Client Server Communication

TCP Client
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class TCPClient
{
public static void main (String args[])
{
Socket s = null;
 Distrubuted Systems 2.33

try
{
intserverPort = 7896;
s = new Socket(args[1], serverPort);
DataInputStream in = new DataInputStream( s.getInputStream());
DataOutputStream out = new DataOutputStream( s.getOutputStream());
out.writeUTF(args[0]); // UTF is a string encoding;
String data = in.readUTF();
System.out.println("Received: "+ data) ;
}
catch (UnknownHostException e)
{
System.out.println("Sock:"+e.getMessage());
}
catch (EOFException e)
{ System.out.println("EOF:"+e.getMessage());
}
catch (IOException e)
{ System.out.println("IO:"+e.getMessage());
}
finally
{ if(s!=null)
try
{
s.close();
}
catch (IOException e)
{
2.34 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

/*close failed*/
}
}
}
}

TCP server
import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;
public class TCPServer
{
public static void main (String args[])
{
try{
intserverPort = 7896;
ServerSocketlistenSocket = new ServerSocket(serverPort);
while(true) {
Socket clientSocket = listenSocket.accept();
Connection c = new Connection(clientSocket);
}
} catch(IOException e) {System.out.println("Listen :"+e.getMessage());}
}
}
class Connection extends Thread
{
DataInputStream in;
DataOutputStream out;
Socket clientSocket;
 Distrubuted Systems 2.35

public Connection (Socket aClientSocket)

{
try {
clientSocket = aClientSocket;
in = new DataInputStream( clientSocket.getInputStream());
out =new DataOutputStream( clientSocket.getOutputStream());
this.start();
} catch(IOException e) {System.out.println("Connection:"+e.getMessage());}
}
public void run(){
try { // an echo server
String data = in.readUTF();
out.writeUTF(data);
} catch(EOFException e) {System.out.println("EOF:"+e.getMessage());
} catch(IOException e) {System.out.println("IO:"+e.getMessage());
} finally { try {clientSocket.close();}catch (IOException e){/*close failed*/}}
}
}

2.4 EXTERNAL DATA REPRESENTATION AND MARCHALLING

The information stored in running programs is represented as data structures, whereas
the information in messages is in the form of sequences of bytes. Irrespective of the form of
communication used, the data structure must be converted to a sequence of bytes before
transmission and must be rebuilt on arrival.

External Data Representation is an agreed standard for the representation of data

structures and primitive values.

But there are some problems in data representation. They are:

 Two conversions are necessary (i.e.) conversion of bytes to data structures and
vice versa in case of using an agreed format at both ends.
 Using sender‟s or receiver‟s format and convert at the other end.
2.36 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Marshalling is the process of taking a collection of data items and assembling them
into a form suitable for transmission in a message. Unmarshalling is the process of
disassembling a collection of data on arrival to produce an equivalent collection of
data items at the destination.

The following are the three common approaches to external data representation and
marshalling:
 CORBA: The data representation is concerned with an external representation for
the structured and primitive types that can be passed as the arguments and results
of remote method invocations in CORBA. It can be used by a variety of
programming languages. Marshalling and unmarshalling is done by the
middleware in binary form.
 Java’s object serialization: This is concerned with the flattening and external data
representation of any single object or tree of objects that may need to be
transmitted in a message or stored on a disk. It is for use only by Java. Marshalling
and unmarshalling is done by the middleware in binary form.
 XML: This defines a textual fomat for representing structured data. It was
originally intended for documents containing textual self-describing structured
data. Marshalling and unmarshalling is in texual form.

2.4.1 CORBA’a Common Data Representation (CDR)

CORBA CDR is the external data representation defined with CORBA 2.0.It consists
15 primitive types:
 Short (16 bit)
 Long (32 bit)
 Unsigned short
 Unsigned long
 Float(32 bit)
 Double(64 bit)
 Char
 Boolean(TRUE,FALSE)
 Octet(8 bit)
 Any(can represent any basic or constructed type)
 Distrubuted Systems 2.37

There are two types of CDR in CORBA:

 Primitive types: CDR defines a representation for both big-endian and little-
endian orderings. Characters are represented by a code set agreed between
client and server.
 Constructed types: The primitive values that comprise each constructed type
are added to a sequence of bytes in a particular order. The following are the
constructed types:
 sequence length (unsigned long): followed by elements in order

 string length (unsigned long): followed by characters in order (can also

have wide characters)
 array: array elements in order (no length specified because it is fixed)
 struct: in the order of declaration of the components
 enumerated unsigned long: the values are specified by the order declared
 union: type tag followed by the selected member
Example:
struct with value {„Sona‟, „Chennai‟, 1986}

0-3 4 Length of the string

4-7 “Sona” String

8-11 “@ ”

12-15 7 Length of the string

16-19 “Chen” Chennai

20-23 “on ”

24-27 1986 Unsigned long

Marshalling in CORBA
The type of a data item not given in case of CORBA. CORBA assumes that both the
sender and recipient have common knowledge of the order and types of data items. The types
of data structures and types of basic data items are described in CORBA IDL. This provides a
notation for describing the types of arguments and results of RMI methods
2.38 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Example:
Struct student
{
string name;
stringrollnumber;
}

2.4.2 Java Object Serilaization

In Java RMI, both object and primitive data values may be passed as arguments and
results of method invocation. An object is an instance of a Java class. The Java equivalent for
the above mentioned CORBA construct is :
Public class student implements Serializable
{ Private String name;
Private String rollnumber;
Public student(String aName ,String arollnumber)
{
name = aName;
rollnumber= arollnumber;
}
}

Student 8 bit version number h0 Class name, version

2 Java.lang.string.name Java.lang.string.rollnumber Number, type and

name of instance
variables

5Sona 8CS50 h1 Values of variables

To serialize an object: ‹
(1) its class info is written out: name, version number ‹
(2) types and names of instance variables • If an instance variable belong to a new
class, then new class info must be written out, recursively. Each class is given a
handle ‹
 Distrubuted Systems 2.39

(3) values of instance variables ‹

Example: student s = new student(“5Sona”, “8CS50”);
‹ Thefollowinga re the steps to serialize objects in Java:
 create an instance of ObjectOutputStream ‹
 Invoke writeObject method passing Person object as argument ‹
To deserialize
 create an instance of ObjectInputStream ‹
 Invoke readObject method to reconstruct the original object
ObjectOutputStream out = new ObjectOutputStream(… );
out.writeObject(originalStudent);
ObjectInputStream in = new ObjectInputStream(…);
Student theStudent = in.readObject();
Reflection:
Reflection is inquiring about class properties, e.g., names, types of methods and
variables, of objects. This allows to perform serialization and deserialization in a generic
manner, unlike in CORBA, which needs IDL specifications. For serialization, use reflection to
find out
(1) class name of the object to be serialized
(2) the names, types
(3) values of its instance variables „
For deserialization,
(1) class name in the serialized form is used to create a class
(2) it is then used to create a constructor with arguments types corresponding to those
specified in the serialized form.
(3) the new constructor is used to create a new object with instance variables whose
values are read from the serialized form

2.4.3 XML (Extensible Markup Language)

 XML is a markup language that was defined by the World Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) for general use on the Web.
 Markup language refers to a textual encoding that represents both a text and
details as to its structure or its appearance.
2.40 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 In XML, the data items are tagged with „markup‟ strings.

 The tags are used to describe the logical structure of the data and to associate
attribute-value pairs with logical structures.
 XML is used to enable clients to communicate with web services and for defining
the interfaces and other properties of web services.
 XML is extensible in the sense that users can define their own tags, in contrast to
HTML, which uses a fixed set of tags.
 XML could be used by multiple applications for different purposes.
Example:
<student id="123456789">
<name>Sona</name>
<rollnumber>CS50</rollnumber>
<year>1984</year>

XML elements and attributes

 Elements: An element in XML consists of a portion of character data surrounded

by matching start and end tags.

 Attributes: A start tag may optionally include pairs of associated attribute names
and values such as id="123456789".
 Names: The names of tags and attributes in XML generally start with a letter, but
can also start with an underline or a colon. The names continue with letters, digits,
hyphens, underscores, colons or full stops. Letters are case-sensitive. Names that
start with xml are reserved.

 Binary data: All of the information in XML elements must be expressed as

character data. The encrypted elements or secure hashes are represented as base64
notation.

 CDATA: XML parsers normally parse the contents of elements because they may
contain further nested structures. If text needs to contain an angle bracket or a
quote, it may be represented in a special way.

 Namespace: A namespace applies within the context of the enclosing pair of start
and end tags unless overridden by an enclosed namespace declaration.
2.4.3 Remote Object Reference
 Remote object references are used when a client invokes an object that is located
on a remote server.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.41

 A remote object reference is passed in the invocation message to specify which

object is to be invoked.
 Remote object references must be unique over space and time.

Fig 2.8: Representation of remote object references

The following are mandatory for remote object reference
 internet address/port number: process which created object

 time: creation time

 object number: local counter, incremented each time an object is created in the
creating process
 interface: how to access the remote object (if object reference is passed from
one client to another)

2.5 MULTICAST COMMUNICATION

Multicast (one-to-many or many-to-many distribution) is group

communication where information is addressed to a group of destination
computers simultaneously.

Multicast operation is an operation that sends a single message from one process to
each of the members of a group of processes. The simplest way of multicasting, provides no
guarantees about message delivery or ordering.
The following are the characteristics of multicasting:
 Fault tolerance based on replicated services:
 A replicated service consists of a group of servers.
 Client requests are multicast to all the members of the group, each of which
performs an identical operation.
 Finding the discovery servers in spontaneous networking

 Multicast messages can be used by servers and clients to locate available

discovery services in order to register their interfaces or to look up the
interfaces of other services in the distributed system.
2.42 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Better performance through replicated data

 Data are replicated to increase the performance of a service.
 Propagation of event notifications

 Multicast to a group may be used to notify processes when something happens.

Join to receive
multicast message

Receiver
Multicast IP
Address

Sender Receiver

Receiver
Fig 2.9: Multicasting
2.5.1 IP Multicast
 IP multicast is built on top of the Internet protocol.

 IP multicast allows the sender to transmit a single IP packet to a multicast group.

 A multicast group is specified by class D IP address with1110 as it starting byte.

 The membership of a multicast group is dynamic.

 A computer is said to be in a multicast group if one or more processes have sockets

that belong to the multicast group.
The following details are important when using IPV4 IP multicasting:

 Multicast IP routers
 IP packets can be multicast both on local network and on the Internet.
 Local multicast uses local network such as Ethernet.
 To limit the distance of propagation of a multicast datagram, the sender can
specify the number of routers it is allowed to pass- called the time to live
(TTL).
 Distrubuted Systems 2.43

 Multicast address allocation

 Multicast addressing may be permanent or temporary.

 Permanent groups exist even when there are no members.

 Multicast addressing by temporary groups must be created before use and will
stop to exit when all members have left the particular multicast group.

 To start or to join a particular multicast group, a session directory (sd)

program is used.

 This is a tool with an interactive interface that allows users to browse

advertised multicast sessions and to advertise their own session, specifying the
time and duration that it wishes to be in the group.

Failure model for IP multicast datagram

They suffer from omission failures. The messages are not guaranteed to be delivered
to the group member in case of omission failures.

2.5.2 Java API to IP multicast

 The Java API provides a datagram interface to IP multicast through the class
MulticastSocket.

 MulticastSocket is a subset of DatagramSocket.

 It has the capability of being able to join multicast groups.

 The multicast datagram socket class is useful for sending and receiving IP
multicast packets.

 A MulticastSocket is a (UDP) DatagramSocket, with additional capabilities for

joining "groups" of other multicast hosts on the internet.

 The class MulticastSocket provides two constructors:

 MulticastSocket(): Create a multicast socket.

 MulticastSocket(int): Create a multicast socket and bind it to a specific port.

MulticastSender.java
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class MulticastSender {
2.44 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

public static void main(String[] args) {

DatagramSocket socket = null;
DatagramPacketoutPacket = null;
byte[] outBuf;
final int PORT = 8888;
try {
socket = new DatagramSocket();
long counter = 0;
String msg;
while (true) {
msg = " multicast! " + counter;
counter++;
outBuf = msg.getBytes();
//Send to multicast IP address and port
InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName("224.2.2.3");
outPacket = new DatagramPacket(outBuf, outBuf.length, address, PORT);
socket.send(outPacket);
System.out.println("Server sends : " + msg);
try {
Thread.sleep(500);
} catch (InterruptedExceptionie) {
}
}
} catch (IOExceptionioe) {
System.out.println(ioe);
}
}
}
 Distrubuted Systems 2.45

Multicastreceiver.java
import java.io.*;
import java.net.*;
public class MulticastReceiver {
public static void main(String[] args) {
MulticastSocket socket = null;
DatagramPacketinPacket = null;
byte[] inBuf = new byte[256];
try {
//Prepare to join multicast group
socket = new MulticastSocket(8888);
InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName("224.2.2.3");
socket.joinGroup(address);
while (true) {
inPacket = new DatagramPacket(inBuf, inBuf.length);
socket.receive(inPacket);
String msg = new String(inBuf, 0, inPacket.getLength());
System.out.println("From " + inPacket.getAddress() + " Msg : " + msg);
}
} catch (IOExceptionioe) {
System.out.println(ioe);
}
}
}

The following methods are available in MulticastSocket class:

 getInterface():Retrieve the address of the network interface used for multicast
packets.
 getTTL():Get the default time-to-live for multicast packets sent out on the socket.
2.46 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 joinGroup(InetAddress): Joins a multicast group.

 leaveGroup(InetAddress):Leave a multicast group.
 send(DatagramPacket, byte):Sends a datagram packet to the destination, with a
TTL (time- to-live) other than the default for the socket.
 setInterface(InetAddress): Set the outgoing network interface for multicast
packets on this socket, to other than the system default.

 setTTL(byte): Set the default time-to-live for multicast packets sent out on this
socket.

2.5.2 Reliability and ordering in multicasting

There are many factors that puts the reliability of multicasting under question:
 A datagram sent from one multicast router to another may be lost.
 There are chances for a single datagram to arrive at multiple recipients, any one of
those recipients may drop the message because its buffer is full.
 If a multicast router fails, the group members beyond that router will not receive
the multicast message.

Ordering issue:
IP packets do not necessarily arrive in the order in which they were sent. Messages
sent by two different processes will not necessarily arrive in the same order at all the members
of the group. The problem of reliability and ordering is more common in:
 Fault tolerance based on replicated services
 Discovering services in spontaneous networking
 Better performance through replicated data
 Propagation of event notifications

2.6 NETWORK VIRTULIZATION: OVERLAY NETWORKS

Network virtualization is the construction of many different virtual networks over an
existing network such as the Internet.

Network virtualization refers to the management and monitoring of an entire

computer network as a single administrative entity from a single software-based
administrator’s console.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.47

NV is implemented by installing software and services to manage the sharing

of storage, computing cycles and applications. All servers and services in the network are
treated as a single pool of resources that can be accessed without regard for
its physical components.

2.6.1 Overlay Networks

An overlay network is a virtual network of nodes and logical links that is built on top
of an existing network with the purpose to implement a network service that is not
available in the existing network.

The overlay network may sometimes change the properties of the underlying network.
The overlay network provides:

 a service that is tailored towards the needs of a class of application or a particular

higher-level service
 more efficient operation in a given networked environment

 additional feature – for example, multicast or secure communication.

Advantages:
 They enable new network services to be defined without requiring changes to the
underlying network.
 They encourage experimentation with network services and the customization of
services to particular classes of application.
 Multiple overlays can be defined and can coexist, with the end result being a more
open and extensible network architecture.

Disadvantages:
 They introduce an extra level of indirection.
 They add to the complexity of network services.

Types of Overlay Networks

The overlay networks are classified based on the following criteria:

1. Classification based on application:

 Distributed hash tables:
A method for storing hash tables in geographically distributed locations in
order to provide a failsafe lookupmechanism for distributed computing. The
2.48 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

overlay network offers a service that manages a mapping from keys to values
across a potentially large number of nodes in a completely decentralized
manner (similar to a standard hash table but in a networked environment).

 Peer-to-peer file sharing:

Overlay structures that focus on constructing tailored addressing and routing
mechanisms to support the cooperative discovery and use of files.

 Content distribution networks:

Overlays that subsume a range of replication, caching and placement strategies
to provide improved performance in terms of content delivery to web users;
used for web acceleration and to offer the required real-time performance for
video streaming.

2. Classification based on network style:

 Wireless ad hoc networks: Network overlays that provide customized routing

protocols for wireless ad hoc networks.

 Disruption-tolerant networks: Overlays designed to operate in hostile

environments that suffer significant node or link failure and potentially high
delays

3. Classification based on additional features:

 Multicast: Overlay networks provide access to multicast services where

multicast routers are not available.
 Security: Overlay networks that offer enhanced security over the underling IP
network, including virtual private networks.
 Resilience: Overlay networks that seek an order of magnitude improvement in
robustness and availability of Internet paths

2.6.2 Skype –An overlay Network

Skype employs a partially decentralized architecture – a mix of the peer-to-peer and
client-server architectures. The client-server system is used for authentication while the peer-
to-peer system is used for IP telephony, relaying, indexing peers and file transfers. On top of
this is the Skype overlay network which users interact with directly, an overlay network is a
virtual network that is formed above and independent of the underlying Internet protocol
network. Skype uses overlay networks to achieve the following:

1. It enables them to design and use their own proprietary protocols and
application over the Internet. This enables Skype to encrypt all packet
transmissions.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.49

2. Redundant links between Skype peers guarantees robustness. This assures of end-
to-end connection even when network resources are severely limited.
3. The peer-to-peer overlay model provides an elegant solution to the
scalability challenge, given the huge number of interconnected nodes.
4. Skype uses its overlay network to circumvent problems arising from
Network Address Translation traversal and bypass firewalls.

5. Routing and relaying are very flexible; protocols allow peers to autonomously
set up links with the best nodes available.
6. The overlay allows Skype to store a lot of offline data in its peers leading
to reduced storage infrastructure expenses.
7. Employing peer relays improves the quality of VoIP calls.

Fig 2.10: Skype Overlay Network

Skype architecture
 Skype is based on a peer-to-peer infrastructure consisting of ordinary users‟
machines called hosts and super nodes.
 Super nodes are ordinary Skype hosts that happen to have sufficient capabilities to
carry out their enhanced role.
 Super nodes are selected on demand based a range of criteria including bandwidth
available, reach ability and availability.
2.50 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

User connection

 Skype users are authenticated through a login server.

 They then make contact with a selected super node. To achieve this, each client
maintains a cache of super node identities.

 At first login this cache is filled with the addresses of around seven super nodes,
and over time the client builds and maintains a much larger set (perhaps several
hundred).

Search for users

 Super nodes search the global index of users, which is distributed across the super
nodes.

 The search is orchestrated by the client‟s chosen super node and involves an
expanding search of other super nodes until the specified user is found.

 A user search typically takes between three and four seconds to complete for hosts
that have a global IP address.

Voice connection

 Skype establishes a voice connection between the two parties using TCP for
signaling all requests and terminations and either UDP or TCP for the streaming
audio.

2.7 MESSAGE PASSING INTERFACE (MPI)

Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a standardized and portable message-passing

system to function on a wide variety of parallel computers.

 MPI primarily addresses the message-passing parallel programming model: data is

moved from the address space of one process to that of another process through
cooperative operations on each process.
 The primary goal of the Message Passing Interface is to provide a widely used
standard for writing message passing programs.
 The interface attempts to be: practical, portable, efficient and flexible.
 The basic principles of exchanging messages between two processes using send
and receive operations is covered in MPI.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.51

 There are two types of message passing:

 Synchronous message passing: This is implemented by blocking send and
receive calls.
 Asynchronous message passing: This is implemented by a non-blocking
form of send.
Originally, MPI was designed for distributed memory architectures.As architecture
trends changed, shared memory SMPs were combined over networks creating hybrid
distributed memory / shared memory systems. MPI runs on virtually any hardware platform
like distributed memory, shared memory and in hybrid memory.

Send Operations Blocking Mode Non Blocking Mode

Generic MPI_Send: MPI_Isend:
the sender blocks until it is safe to the call returns immediately and
return (i.e.) until the message is in the programmer is given a
transit or delivered and the communication request handle,
sender‟s application buffer can which can then be used to check
therefore be reused. the progress of the call via
MPI_WaitorMPI_Test.

Synchronous MPI_Ssend: MPI_Issend:

the sender and receiver as with MPI_Isend,but with
synchronize and the call only MPI_WaitandMPI_Testindicating
returns when the message has been whether the message has been
delivered at the receiving end. delivered at the receive end.

Buffered MPI_Bsend: MPI_Ibsend:

the sender explicitly allocates an as with MPI_I send but with
MPI buffer library and the call MPI_WaitandMPI_Testindicating
returns when the data is whether the message has been
successfully copied into this copied into the sender‟s MPI
buffer. buffer and hence is in transit.

Ready MPI_Rsend: MPI_Irsend:

the call returns when the sender‟s the effect is as with MPI_Isend,
application buffer can be reused but as with MPI_Rsend, the
but the programmer is also programmer is indicating to the
indicating to the library that the underlying implementation that
receiver is ready to receive the the receiver is guaranteed to be
message, resulting in potential ready to receive.
optimization of the underlying
implementation.
2.52 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

2.8 REMOTE INVOCATION

In a distributed object system, an object's data should be accessible only via its
methods. The objects can be accessed via object references. The following terminologies are
important in remote invocations:
 An interface provides a definition of the signatures of a set of methods without
specifying their implementation.
 An action is initiated by an object invoking a method in another object.

 The state of an object consists of the values of its instance variables.

Remote invocations are method invocations for objects in different processes.

 Remote objects are objects that can receive remote invocation.

The core part of the distributed object model is:
- remote object reference;
- remote interface: specifies which methods can be invoked remotely;
2.8.1 Request reply protocols
The overview of request reply protocol is:
 The client sends a query to the server, and reads from the socket, usually in a
blocking way, for the server response.
 The server processes the command and sends the response back to the client.
The Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a common model of request reply protocol.
There are two types of communication:
 Synchronous: The client process blocks until the reply arrives from the server.
It is termed as reliable form of communication since the reply from the server
is actually an acknowledgement to the client.
 Asynchronous: The clients can retrieve the replies from the server later.
UDP is preferred over TCP for the following reasons:
 Acknowledgements are redundant, since requests are followed by replies.
 Establishing a connection involves two extra pairs of messages in addition to
the pair required for a request and a reply.
 Flow control is redundant for the majority of invocations, which pass only
small arguments and results.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.53

Request Reply protocol:

The following are the primitives in request reply protocols:
 public byte[] doOperation (RemoteObjectRef o, intmethodId, byte[]
arguments):
This method sends a request message to the remote object and returns the
reply. The arguments specify the remote object, the method to be invoked
and the arguments of that method.
 public byte[] getRequest ():
This method acquires a client request via the server port.
 public void sendReply (byte[] reply, InetAddressclientHost,
intclientPort):
This method sends the reply message reply to the client at its Internet
address and port.
Message identifiers
Each message have a unique message identifier for referencing it. A message identifier
consists of two parts:
 request Id: Increasing sequence of integers assigned by the sending process.
This makes the message unique to the sender.
 an identifier: for the sender process. This makes the message unique in the
distributed system.
Failure model of the request-reply protocol
The following are the common failures in request reply protocol:
 Omission failures.
 Messages are not guaranteed to be delivered in sender order.
 Failure of processes.
Discarding duplicate request messages
The server may receive the same request message more than once. To avoid this, the
protocol is designed to recognize successive messages from the same client with the same
request identifier and to filter out duplicates.
Lost reply messages
If the server has already sent the reply to which it receives a duplicate request it will
need to execute the operation again to obtain the result. This could be avoided if the server has
stored the result of the original execution.
2.54 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

History

History is used to refer to a structure that contains a record of reply messages that
have been transmitted by the server.

Each entry in the history has

 a request identifier
 a message
 client identifier
The main goal of history is to allow the server to retransmit replymessages when client
processes request them. The main issue faced by the history is the size. As more
communication takes place, more messages need to be saved in the history which incurs more
cost.
Styles of exchange protocols
There are three exchange protocols:
 request (R) protocol: a single request message is sent by the client to the server
 request-reply (RR) protocol: used in client-server exchanges because it is based
on the request-reply protocol. Special acknowledgement messages are not
required.
 request-reply-acknowledge reply (RRA) protocol: It is based on request-reply-
acknowledge reply. The Acknowledge reply message contains the requested from
the reply message being acknowledged. This will enable the server to discard
entries from its history. The arrival of a requested in an acknowledgement message
will be interpreted as acknowledging the receipt of all reply messages with lower
request Ids.
TCP streams to implement the request-reply protocol
It is difficult to determine the buffer size for the UDP datagrams. Also the fixed size of
the datagrams imposes a limit on the message size which is not favorable. So TCP streams
are preferred since they allow messages of any size to be transmitted. If the TCP protocol is
used, it ensures that request and reply messages are delivered reliably thereby avoiding
acknowledgments. The overhead due to TCP acknowledgement messages is reduced when a
reply message follows soon after a request message.
HTTP: An Example Request Reply protocol
Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is a stateless request-response based
communication protocol. It's used to send and receive data on the Web i.e., over the Internet.
This protocol uses reliable TCP connections either for the transfer of data to and from clients
(Web Browsers).
 Distrubuted Systems 2.55

Fig 2.11: HTTP Request-Response protocol

HTTP specifies the messages involved in a request-reply exchange, the methods,
arguments and results, and the rules for representing (marshalling) them in the messages. This
protocol allows for content negotiation and password-style authentication
 Content negotiation: Clients‟ requests can include information as to what
data representations they can accept.
 Authentication: Credentials and challenges are used to support password-
style authentication.
The following are the connection establishment and closing steps:
 The client requests and the server accepts a connection at the default server
port or at a port specified in the URL.

 The client sends a request message to the server.

 The server sends a reply message to the client.
 The connection is closed after the communication is over.

Connections in HTTP
There are two types of connections in HTTP: Persistent and non persistent

Differences between persistent and non persistent connections

Persistent Connection Non persistent Connection

On the same TCP connection the server, The server parses request, responds, and
parses request, responds and waits for new closes TCP connection.
requests.

It takes fewer RTTs to fetch the objects. It takes 2 RTTs to fetch each object.

It has less slow start. Each object transfer suffers from slow start
2.56 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem
HTTP Request Message
Method URL HTTP Headers Message
version body
GET http://www.abc.ac.ind/data.html HTTP/1.1

Fig 2.12: HTTP Request Message

The following are the parts of HTTP request frame :
 Request Method: The request method indicates the method to be performed on
the resource identified by the given Request-URL. The method is case-
sensitive and should always be mentioned in uppercase.
 Request-URL: This Uniform Resource Identifier and identifies the resource
upon which to apply the request.
 Request Header Fields: The request-header fields allow the client to pass
additional information about the request, and about the client itself, to the
server. These fields act as request modifiers.
 HTTP Version: This specifies the version of HTTP used.
HTTP Methods
The following are the HTTP methods:
 GET: The GET method is used to retrieve information from the given server
using a given URI. Requests using GET should only retrieve data and should
have no other effect on the data.
 HEAD: Same as GET, but it transfers the status line and the header section
only.
 POST: A POST request is used to send data to the server, for example,
customer information, file upload, etc. using HTML forms.
 PUT: Replaces all the current representations of the target resource with the
uploaded content.
 DELETE: Removes all the current representations of the target resource given
by URI.
 CONNECT: Establishes a tunnel to the server identified by a given URI.
 OPTIONS: Describe the communication options for the target resource.
 TRACE: Performs a message loop back test along with the path to the target
resource.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.57

HTTP Response Message

HTTP Version Status Code Reason Headers Message body
HTTP/1.1 2xx OK Data

Fig 2.13: HTTP Response Message

A response message consists of the protocol version followed by a numeric status
code and its associated textual phrase.
 HTTP Version: A server supporting HTTP version 1.1 will return the following
version information: HTTP-Version = HTTP/1.1
 Status Code: The Status-Code element is a 3-digit integer where first digit of the
Status-Code defines the class of response and the last two digits do not have any
categorization role. There are 5 values for the first digit:
 1xx- Informational :It means the request was received and the process is
continuing.
 2xx- Success: It means the action was successfully received, understood, and
accepted.
 3xx-Redirection: It means further action must be taken in order to complete
the request.
 4xx- Client Error: It means the request contains incorrect syntax or cannot be
fulfilled.
 5xx- Server error: It means the server failed to fulfill an apparently valid
request.
HTTP status codes are extensible and HTTP applications are not required to
understand the meaning of all registered status codes.
 Response Header Fields: The response-header fields allow the server to pass
additional information about the response which cannot be placed in the Status-
Line. These header fields give information about the server and about further
access to the resource identified by the Request-URI.
2.8.2 Remote Procedure Call (RPC)
RPC is a powerful technique for constructing distributed, client-server based
applications. In RPC, the procedure need not exist in the same address space as the calling
procedure. The two processes may be on the same system, or they may be on different
systems with a network connecting them. By using RPC, programmers of distributed
applications avoid the details of the interface with the network. RPC makes the client/server
model of computing more powerful and easier to program.
2.58 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a protocol that one program can use to request a
service from a program located in another computer in a network without having to
understand network details.

Design issues in RPC

The following are the design issues in RPC:

 Programming with interfaces

- Communication between modules in a program can be done by procedure calls
between modules or by direct access to the variables in another module.
- To control the interactions between modules, an explicit interface is defined for
each module that specifies the procedures and the variables that can be
accessed from other modules.
- The interface hides the programming details of one module from the other.
- The interaction between the modules can happen even after the modification of
the modules but without modifying the interfaces.

 Interfaces in distributed systems

- Each server in the client server model provides a set of procedures that are
available for use by clients.
- The separation between interface and implementation offers the following
advantages:
 The programmers need not be aware of implementation details of each
modules.
 In the perspective of distributed systems, the programmers need to know the
programming language or underlying platform used to implement the
service.
 It provides support for software evolution in which implementations can
change as long as long as the interface remains the same. But the interface
can also change as long as it remains compatible with the original.
 Interface definition languages:
- An RPC mechanism can be integrated with a particular programming language
if it contains notations for defining interfaces, allowing input and output
parameters to be mapped onto the language‟s normal use of parameters.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.59

- But programs can also be written in a variety of languages to access them

remotely.
- In such cases Interface definition languages (IDL) are used which contains
procedures implemented indifferent languages to invoke one another.
 RPC call semantics
- In request-reply protocols doOperation can be implemented in different ways to
provide different delivery guarantees:
 Retry request message: Controls whether to retransmit the request message
until either a reply is received or the server is assumed to have failed.
 Duplicate filtering : Controls when retransmissions are used and whether to
filter out duplicate requests at the server.
 Retransmission of results: Controls whether to keep a history of result
messages to enable lost results to be retransmitted without re-executing the
operations at the server.
- The above choices lead to a variety of possible semantics as given below:
a) Maybe semantics: Here, the remote procedure call may be executed once
or not at all. Maybe semantics arises when no fault-tolerance measures are
applied and can suffer from the following types of failure:
 omission failures if the request or result message is lost
 crash failures.
May be semantics is useful only for applications in which occasional failed
calls are acceptable.
b) At-least-once semantics: Here the invoker receives either a result, in which
case the invoker knows that the procedure was executed at least once, or an
exception informing it that no result was received. At-least-once semantics
can suffer from the following types of failure:
 crash failures when the server containing the remote procedure fails
 arbitrary failures
c) At-most-once semantics: Here, the caller receives either a result, in which
case the caller knows that the procedure was executed exactly once, or an
exception informing it that no result was received, in which case the
procedure will have been executed either once or not at all.
 Transparency
- The remote procedure calls are much like local procedure calls as possible, with
no distinction in syntax between a local and a remote procedure call.
2.60 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

- All the necessary calls to marshalling and message-passing procedures were

hidden from the programmer making the call.
- Although request messages are retransmitted after a timeout, this is transparent
to the caller to make the semantics of remote procedure calls like that of local
procedure calls
- The usage of middleware can also offer additional levels of transparency to
RPC.
- But RPC‟s are more vulnerable to failure than local calls since they involve a
network, another computer and another process.
- So the clients making remote calls must be able to recover from such situations.
- The latency of a remote procedure call is several orders of magnitude greater
than that of a local one.
Implementation of RPC

Fig 2.14: Client and Server stub in RPC

- The client that accesses a service includes one stub procedure for each procedure
in the service interface.

A stub is a piece of code that is used to convert parameters during a remote

procedure call (RPC). An RPC allows a client computer to remotely call procedures
on a server computer.

- The parameters used in a function call have to be converted because the client and
server computers use different address spaces.

- Stubs perform this conversion so that the remote server computer perceives the
RPC as a local function call.

- The client stub routine performs the following functions:

 Distrubuted Systems 2.61

 Marshals arguments: The client stub packages input arguments into a form
that can be transmitted to the server.
 Calls the client run-time library to transmit arguments to the remote address
space and invokes the remote procedure in the server address space.
 Unmarshals output argument: The client stub unpacks output arguments and
returns to the caller.
- The server stub procedure unmarshals the arguments in the request message, calls
the corresponding service procedure and marshals the return values for the reply
message.
- The client and server stub procedures and the dispatcher are automatically
generated by an interface compiler from the interface definition of the service.

2.8.3 Remote Method Invocation (RMI)

RMI is a set of protocols being developed by Sun's JavaSoft division that

enables Java objects to communicate remotely with other Java objects.

RMI is closely related to RPC but extended into the world of distributed objects. RMI
is a true distributed computing application interface specially designed for Java, written to
provide easy access to objects existing on remote virtual machines

Differences between RMI and RPC

RMI RPC
RMI uses an object oriented paradigm where RPC is not object oriented and does not deal
the user needs to know the object and the with objects. Rather, it calls specific
method of the object he needs to invoke. subroutines that are already established

With RPC looks like a local call. RPC RMI handles the complexities of passing
handles the complexities involved with along the invocation from the local to the
passing the call from the local to the remote remote computer. But instead of passing a
computer. procedural call, RMI passes a reference to the
object and the method that is being called.

The commonalities between RMI and RPC are as follows:

 They both support programming with interfaces.
 They are constructed on top of request-reply protocols.
 They both offer a similar level of transparency.
2.62 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Fig 2.15: RMI in JVM

Features of RMI
 In RMI, the remote objects are treated similarly to local objects.
 RMI provide access to objects existing on remote virtual machines.
 RMI handles marshalling, transportation, and garbage collection of the remote
objects.
 RMI was incorporated as a part of the JDK with version 1.1
Limitations of RMI
 RMI is not language independent. It is limited only to Java.
 Interfaces to remote objects are defined using ordinary Java interfaces not with
special IDLs.
Design issues of RMI
The RMI evolved from simple object model to distributed objects model.
a) Object Oriented Model
An object communicates with other objects by invoking their methods by
arguments and return values. Objects can encapsulate their dataand the code of
their methods. In a distributed object system, an object‟s data should be accessible
only through its methods.
 Object references:
– Objects are accessed through object references.
– Object references could be assigned to variables, passed as arguments and
returned as results of methods.
 Interfaces:
– An interface provides implementation independent, definition of the
signatures of a set of methods.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.63

– An interface is not a class. A class describes the attributes and behaviors of

an object. An interface contains behaviors that a class implements.
– An interface can contain any number of methods.
– An interface is written in a file with a .java extension, with the name of the
interface matching the name of the file.
– The byte code of an interface appears in a .class file.
– Interfaces do not have constructors.
Differences between Interfaces and Class

Interfaces Class
Interfaces cannot be instantiated. Classes can be instantiated.
They do not contain constructors. They can have constructors.
They cannot have instance fields (i.e.) all the No constraints over the fields.
fields in an interface must be declared both
static and final.
The interface can contain only abstract They can contain method implementation.
method.
Interfaces are implemented by a class not Classes are extended by other classes.
extended.

 Actions :
– Action is initiated by an object invoking a method in another object with or
without arguments.
– The receiver executes the appropriate method and thenreturns control to the
invoking object.
– The following are the effects of actions:
 The state of the receiver may be changed.
 A new object may be instantiated.
 Further invocations on methods in other objects may take place.

 Exceptions:
– Exceptions are run time errors.
– The programmers must write code that could handle all possible unusual or
erroneous cases.
2.64 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Garbage collection:

– This is a method in Java to free the space occupied by obsolete objects.

b) Distributed objects

 Distributed object systems may adopt the client-server architecture where the
objects are managed by servers and their clients invoke their methods using
remote method invocation.

 In RMI, the client‟s request to invoke a method of an object is sent in a

message to the server managing the object.

 The invocation is carried out by executing a method of the object at the server
and the result is returned to the client in another message.

 Objects with different data formats may be used at different sites.

c) The distributed object model

In this model, each process contains a collection of objects, some of which can
receive both local and remote invocations, whereas the other objects can receive
only local invocations. The core concepts of distributed object model:

 Remote object references: Other objects can invoke the methods of a

remote object if they have access to its remote object reference.

 Remote interfaces: Every remote object has a remote interface that

specifies which of its methods can be invoked remotely.

 Remote object references: The notion of object reference is extended to

allow any object that can receive an RMI to have a remote object reference.

A remote object reference is an identifier that can be used throughout a

distributed system to refer to a particular unique remote object.

The remote object to receive a remote method invocation is specified by the invoker as
a remote object reference. The remote object references may be passed as arguments and
results of remote method invocations.
 Remote interfaces: The class of a remote object implements the methods of its
remote interface. Objects in other processes can invoke only the methods that
belong to its remote interface.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.65

Fig 2.16: Remote and local invocations

Differences between remote and local objects

Remote Objects Local Objects

Creating a remote object requires creating a They consume less time cycles.
stub and a skeleton, which will cost more
time cycles.
Marshalling and unmarshalling is required. Marshalling and unmarshalling is not
required.
Longer time is taken by the remote object to Comparatively shorter return time.
return to the calling program.

Fig 2.17: Remote Object and remote interfaces

Garbage collection in a distributed-object system:
Distributed garbage collection is usually based on reference counting. The total
number of references to the object is maintained by a reference count field. The advantage
of using reference counts is that garbage is easily identified. When it becomes necessary to
reclaim the storage from unused objects, the garbage collector needs only to examine the
reference count fields of all the objects that have been created by the program. If the reference
count is zero, the object is garbage.

Exceptions:
Any remote invocation may fail because of exceptions. So RMI should include
exception handling as a part of their implementation.
2.66 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Implementation of RMI
Implementation of a RMI requires construction if many modules and the supporting
interfaces.
a) Modules:
The two common modules used are communication module and remote reference
module.
Communication module:
 This module implements request-reply protocol.
 This module specifies the message type, its requestId and the remote reference of
the object to be invoked.
 This specifies only the communication semantics.
 The communication module in the server selects the dispatcher for the class of the
object to be invoked, passing on its local reference, which it gets from the remote
reference module in return for the remote object identifier in the request message.
Remote reference module:
 This module is responsible for translation between local and remote object
references and for creating remote object references.
 This module has a remote object table specific for each process that records the
mapping between local object references and remote object references.
 The entries of the table includes:
 the remote objects held by the process.
 local proxy
 The actions of them remote reference module are as follows:
 When a remote object is to be passed as an argument for the first time, the
remote reference module creates a remote object reference and is added to the
table.
 When a remote object reference arrives in a request or reply message the
remote object table is referred for the corresponding local object reference.
 If the remote object reference is not in the table, the RMI software creates a
new proxy and asks the remote reference module to add it to the table.
 This module is called by components of the RMI software during marshalling
and unmarshalling remote object references.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.67

b) Supporting Components
Servants
 A servant is an instance of a class that provides the body of a remote object.
 The responsibility of the servant is to handle the remote requests passed on by the
corresponding skeleton.
 Servants live within a server process.
 They are created when remote objects are instantiated and remain in use until they
are no longer needed and finally servants are garbage collected or deleted.

The RMI software

 This consists of the application-level objects and the communication and remote
reference modules. The RMI software has the following components:
 Proxy: The class of the proxy contains a method corresponding to each
method in the remote interface which marshalls arguments and unmarshalls
results for that method. It hides the details of the remote object reference. Each
method of the proxy marshals a reference to the target object using a request
message (operationId, arguments). When the reply is received the proxy,
unmarshals it and returns the results to the invoker.
 Dispatcher: Server has a dispatcher & a skeleton for each class of remote
object. The dispatcher receives the incoming message, and uses its method info
to pass it to the right method in the skeleton.
 Skeleton: Skeleton implements methods of the remote interface to unmarshall
arguments and invoke the corresponding method in the servant. It then
marshalls the result (or any exceptions thrown) into a reply message to the
proxy.

Generation of the classes for proxies, dispatchers and skeletons

 The classes for the proxy, dispatcher and skeleton used in RMI are generated
automatically by an interface compiler.
 For Java RMI, the set of methods offered by a remote object is defined as a Java
interface.
Dynamic invocation:
 This is an alternative to proxies.
 The proxy just described (i.e.) its class is generated from an interface definition
and then compiled into the client code.
2.68 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 If a client program receives a remote reference to an object whose remote interface

was not available at compile time. The method could not be invoked through
proxies.

 Dynamic invocation is used in this case which gives the client access to a generic
representation of a remote invocation, which is a part of the infrastructure for RMI.

 The client will supply the remote object reference, the name of the method and the
arguments to doOperation and then wait to receive the results.

Dynamic skeletons:

The Dynamic Skeleton Interface (or DSI) allows applications to provide

implementations of the operations on CORBA objects without static knowledge of the object's
interface. It is the server-side equivalent of the Dynamic Invocation Interface.

Server programs

The server program contains

 the classes for the dispatchers and skeletons, with the implementations of the
classes of all of the servants that it supports.

 an initialization section which is responsible for creating and initializing at

least one of the servants to be hosted by the server.

Client programs

The client program will contain

 the classes of the proxies for all of the remote objects that it will invoke.

Factory methods

 Factory methods are static methods that return an instance of the native class.

 Factory method is used to create different object from factory often refereed as
Item and it encapsulate the creation code.

 So instead of having object creation code on client side we encapsulate inside

Factory method in Java.

 The term factory method is sometimes used to refer to a method that creates
servants, and a factory object is an object with factory methods.

 Any remote object that needs to be able to create new remote objects on demand
for clients must provide methods in its remote interface for this purpose. Such
methods are called factory methods, although they are really just normal methods.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.69
Binder
 A binder in a distributed system is a separate service that maintains a table
containing mappings from textual names to remote object references.
 It is used by servers to register their remote objects by name and by clients to look
them up.
Server threads
 Whenever an object executes a remote invocation, that execution may lead to
further invocations of methods in other remote objects, which may take sometime
to return.
 To avoid this, servers generally allocate a separate thread for the execution of each
remote invocation.
Activation of remote objects
 Activation of servers to support remote objects is done by a service called Inetd.
 Certain applications demand the objects to persist for longer times.
 When the objects are maintained for longer period it is actually waste of resources.
 To avoid this the servers could be started on demand as and when needed through
Inetd.
 Processes that start server processes to host remote objects are called activators.
 Based on this remote objects can be described as active or passive.
 An object is said to be active when it is available for invocation.
 An object is called passive if is currently inactive but can be made active.
 A passive object consists of two parts:
 implementation of its methods
 its state in the marshalled form.
 When activating a passive object, an active object is created from the
corresponding passive object by creating a new instance of its class and initializing
its instance variables from the stored state.
 Passive objects can be activated on demand.
Responsibilities of an activator:

 Registering passive objects that are available for activation. This is done by
mapping the names of servers and passive objects.
2.70 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Starting named server processes and activating remote objects in them.

 Tracking the locations of the servers for remote objects that it has alreadyactivated.
 Java RMI provides the ability to make some remote objects activatable
[java.sun.comIX].

Persistent object stores

An object that is guaranteed to live between activations of processes is called a

persistent object.

 Persistent objects are managed by persistent object stores, which store their state in
a marshalled form on disk.
 The objects are activated when their methods are invoked by other objects.
 When activating the object, the invoker will not know whether an object is in main
memory or in a disk.
 The persistent objects that are not needed are maintained in the object store (active
or passive state).
 The decision of making an active object to passive is done through the following
ways:
 in response to a request in the program that activated the objects
 at the end of a transaction
 when the program exits.
 There are two approaches to determine whether an object is persistent or not:
 The persistent object store maintains some persistent roots, and any object that
is reachable from a persistent root is defined to be persistent.
 The persistent object store provides some classes. If the object belong to their
subclasses, then it is persistent.
Object location
 Remote object reference can be done based on the Internet address and port
number of the process that created the remote object.
 Some remote objects will exist in different processes, on different computers,
throughout their lifetime.
 In this case, a remote object reference cannot act as an address for the objects.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.71

 So clients making invocations require both a remote object reference and an

address to which to send invocations.
 A location service helps clients to locate remote objects from their remote object
references.
 It acts as a database that maps remote object references to their probable current
locations.

 Alternatively a cache/broadcast scheme could also be used.

 Here, a member of a location service on each computer holds a small cache of
remote object reference to-location mappings.
 If a remote object reference is in the cache, that address is tried for the invocation
and will fail if the object has moved.
 To locate an object that has moved or whose location is not in the cache, the
system broadcasts a request.

Distributed garbage collection

 It is always desirable to automatically delete the remote objects that are no longer
referenced by any client.
 The memory held by those objects will be recovered.
 RMI uses a reference-counting garbage collection algorithm for automatic
garbage collection.
 In this algorithm, the RMI runtime keeps track of all live references within each
Java virtual machine.

 When a live reference enters a Java virtual machine, its reference count is
incremented.
 The first reference to an object sends a referenced message to the server for the
object.

 As live references are found to be unreferenced in the local virtual machine, the
count is decremented.
 When the last reference has been discarded, an unreferenced message is sent to the
server.
 The Java distributed garbage collection algorithm can tolerate the failure of client
processes.
 To achieve this, servers lease their objects to clients for a limited period of
time.
2.72 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The lease period starts when the client makes first referenceinvocation to the
server.
 It ends either when the time has expired or when the client makes a last reference
invocation to the server.
 The information stored by the server (i.e.) the leasecontains the identifier of the
client‟s virtual machine and the period of the lease.

 Clients are responsible for requesting the server to renew their leases before they
expire.

Leases in Jini
 Jini provides a mechanism for locating services on the network that conform to a
particular (Java) interface, or that have certain attributes associated with them.
 Once a service is located, the client can download an implementation of that
interface, which it then uses to communicate with the service.

 The Jini distributed system includes a specification for leases that can be used in a
variety of situations when one object offers a resource to another object.
 The granting of the use of a resource for a period of time is called a lease.
 The object offering the resource will maintain it until the time in the lease expires.
 The resource users are responsible for requesting their renewal when they expire.
 The period of a lease may be negotiated between the grantor and the recipient in
Jini.
 In Jini, an object representing a lease implements the Lease interface.
 It contains information about the period of the lease and methods enabling the
lease to be renewed or cancelled.

2.9 CASE STUDY: JAVA RMI

In this case study we use shared white board example. This program that allows a
group of users to share a common view of a drawing surface containing graphical objects,
such as rectangles, lines and circles, each of which has been drawn by one of the users.
Remote interfaces in Java RMI
 Remote interfaces are defined by extending an interface called Remote in the
java.rmipackage.
 The methods must throwRemoteException,contain an GraphicalObject which
implements theSerializableinterface.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.73

Java Remote interfaces Shape and ShapeList

import java.rmi.*;
import java.util.Vector;
public interface Shape extends Remote
{
intgetVersion() throws RemoteException;
GraphicalObjectgetAllState() throws RemoteException;
}
public interface ShapeList extends Remote
{
Shape newShape(GraphicalObject g) throws RemoteException;
Vector allShapes() throws RemoteException;
intgetVersion() throws RemoteException;
}

Parameter and result passing

The parameters of a method are input parameters and the result of a method is a single
output parameter. Any object that implements the Serializable interface can be passed as an
argument or result in Java RMI. All primitive types and remote objects are serializable.
 Passing remote objects:
 When the type of a parameter or result value is defined as a remote
interface, the corresponding argument or result is always passed as a
remote object reference.
 When a remote object reference is received, it can be used to make
RMI calls on the remote object to which it refers.
 Passing non-remote objects:
 All serializable non-remote objects are copied and passed by value.
 When an object is passed by value, a new object is created in the
receiver‟s process.
 The methods of this new object can be invoked locally, possibly
causing its state to differ from the state of the original object in the
sender‟s process.
 In this example, the client uses the method new Shape that passes an
instance of GraphicalObject to the server.
 The server creates a remote object of type Shape with the state of the
GraphicalObject and returns a remote object reference to it.
2.74 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The arguments and return values in a remote invocation are used with
the following modifications:
1. Whenever an object that implements the Remote interface is
serialized, it is replaced by its remote object reference, which
contains the name of its (the remote object‟s) class.
2. When any object is serialized, its class information is annotated
with the location of the class (as a URL), enabling the class to be
downloaded by the receiver.

Downloading of classes
 In Java classes can be downloaded from one virtual machine to another.
 If the recipient does not already possess the class of an object passed by value, its
code is downloaded automatically.
 If the recipient of a remote object reference does not already possess the class for a
proxy, its code is downloaded automatically.
 The advantages are:
1. There is no need for every user to keep the same set of classes in their working
environment.
2. Both client and server programs can make transparent use of instances of new
classes whenever they are added.
RMIregistry
 The RMIregistry is the binder for Java RMI.
 It maintains a table mapping URL-style names to references to remote objects.
 The Naming class is used to access the RMIregistry.
 The methods of the naming class is of the general form:

//computerName:port/objectName
where computerName and port refer to the location of the RMIregistry.
 The LocateRegistryclass , which is in java.rmi.registry, is used to discover the
names.
 The getRegistry()returns an object of typeRegistry representing the remote binding
service:
public static Registry getRegistry() throws RemoteException
 Distrubuted Systems 2.75

The following table gives a description of the methods in the Naming class:

Method Description
void rebind (String This method is used by a server to register the identifier
name, Remote obj) of a remote object by name.

void bind (String name, This method is also used to register a remote object by
Remote obj) name, but if the name is already bound to a remote
object reference an exception is thrown.

void unbind (String This method removes a binding.

name, Remote obj)

Remote lookup(String This method returns an array of Strings containing the

name)String [] list() names bound in the registry .This method is used by
clients to look up a remote object by name.

Server Program
import java.util.Vector;
public class ShapeListServant implements ShapeList
{
private Vector theList; // contains the list of Shapes
private int version;
public ShapeListServant(){...}
public Shape newShape(GraphicalObject g)
{
version++;
Shape s = new ShapeServant( g, version);
theList.addElement(s);
return s;
}
public Vector allShapes(){...}
public intgetVersion() { ... }
}
2.76 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Client Program
import java.rmi.*;
import java.rmi.server.*;
import java.util.Vector;
public class ShapeListClient
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
System.setSecurityManager(new RMISecurityManager());
ShapeListaShapeList = null;
try
{
aShapeList = (ShapeList) Naming.lookup("//project.ShapeList");
Vector sList = aShapeList.allShapes();
}
catch(RemoteException e)
{
System.out.println(e.getMessage());
}
catch(Exception e)
{
System.out.println("Client: " + e.getMessage());
}
}
}

Callbacks
Callback refers to a server‟s action of notifying clients about an event. Callbacks can
be implemented in RMI as follows:
 The client creates a remote object that implements an interface that contains a
method for the server to call.
 The server provides an operation allowing interested clients to inform it of the
remote object references of their callback objects.
 Whenever an event of interest occurs, the server calls the interested clients.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.77

The disadvantages of callbacks:

 The performance of the server may be degraded by the constant polling.
 Clients cannot notify users of updates in a timely manner.

Design and implementation of Java RMI

Use of reflection
 Reflection is used to pass information in request messages about the method to be
invoked.
 This is achieved with the help of the class Method in the reflection package.
 Each instance of Method represents the characteristics of a particular method,
including its class and the types of its arguments, return value and exceptions.
 An instance of Method can be invoked on an object of a suitable class by means of
its invoke method.
 The invoke method requires two arguments: the first specifies the object to receive
the invocation and the second is an array of Object containing the arguments. The
result is returned as type Object.
 The proxy has to marshal information about a method and its arguments into the
request message with array of Objects as its arguments and then marshals that
array.

 The dispatcher unmarshals the Method object and its arguments in the array of
Objects from the request message.
 The dispatcher then calls the Method object‟s invoke method, supplying the target
and the array of argument values. When the method has been executed, the
dispatcher marshals the result or any exceptions into the reply message.

Fig 2.13: Classes in Java RMI

Java classes supporting RMI
 Every servent need to extend UnicastRemoteObject.
2.78 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The class UnicastRemoteObject extends an abstract class called RemoteServer,

which provides abstract versions of the methods required by remote servers.
 Activatable class is available for providing activatable objects.

 The class RemoteServer is a subclass of RemoteObject that has an instance

variable holding the remote object reference and provides the following methods:
 equals: Compares remote object references.
 toString: Returns the contents of the remote object reference as a String
 readObject, writeObject: These methods deserialize/serialize remote objects

2.10 GROUP COMMUNICATION

Group communication is a service where a message is sent to a group and then

this message is delivered to all members of the group.

Programming Model
A group has group members (processes) who can join or leave the group. This is done
through multicast communication. There are three communication modes:
 Unicast: Process to process communication
 Broadcast: Communication to all the process
 Multicast: Communication only to a group of processes
Process Groups and Objects Groups
 An object group is a collection of objects that process the same set of invocations
concurrently.
 Client objects invoke operations on a single, local object, which acts as a proxy for
the group.
 The proxy uses a group communication system to send the invocations to the
members of the object group.
 Object parameters and results are marshalled as in RMI and the associated calls are
dispatched automatically to the right destination objects/methods.
Types of group communication
 Closed and open groups: A group is said to be closed if only members of the
group may multicast to it A process in a closed group delivers to itself any
message that it multicasts to the group.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.79

Fig 2.15: Open and Closed group communication

 Overlapping and non-overlapping groups: In overlapping groups, entities may

be members of multiple groups, and non-overlapping groups imply that
membership does not overlap to at most one.

 Synchronous and asynchronous systems: Group communication is possible in

both environments.
Reliability and ordering in multicast
 In group communication, all members of a group must receive copies of the
messages sent to the group, with delivery guarantees.
 Reliable multicast operation is based on:
 Integrity: delivering the message correctly only once
 Validity: guaranteeing that a message sent will eventually be delivered.
 Group communication demands relative ordering of messages delivered to
multiple destinations.
 The following are the types of message ordering:

 FIFO ordering: If a process sends one message before another, it will be

delivered in this order at all processes in the group.
 Causal ordering: If a message happens before another message in the
distributed
system this so-called causal relationship will be preserved in the delivery of
the associated messages at all processes.

 Total ordering: In total ordering, if a message is delivered before another

message at one process, then the same order will be preserved at all
processes.
2.80 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Group membership management

A group membership service has four main tasks:

 Providing an interface for group membership changes: The membership

service provides operations to create and destroy process groups and to add or
withdraw a process to or from a group.

 Failure detection: The service monitors the group members in case of crash and
unreachability. The detector marks processes as Suspected or Unsuspected. The
process is excluded from membership if it is not reachable or crashed.

 Notifying members of group membership changes: The service notifies the

group‟s members when a process is added, or when a process is excluded.

 Performing group address expansion: When a process multicasts a message, it

supplies the group identifier rather than a list of processes in the group.

Fig 2.15: Group membership management

Case study: the JGroups toolkit

JGroups is a toolkit for reliable group communication written in Java. JGroups

supports process groups in which processes are able to join or leave a group, send a message
to all members of the group or indeed to a single member, and receive messages from the
group. The toolkit supports a variety of reliability and ordering guarantees.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.81

Fig 2.16: Architecture of JGroups

The following are the important components in the architecture:
 Channels
 They represent the most primitive interface for application developers,
offering the core functions of joining, leaving, sending and receiving.
 A process interacts with a group through a channel object, which acts as a
handle onto a group.
 The following operations are allowed in channel:
 Connect: binds that handle to a particular named group.If the named
group does not exist, it is implicitly created at the time of the first
connect.
 Disconnect: To leave the group, the process executes the corresponding
disconnect operation.
 Close: will render the channel unusable.
 getView: returns the current view defined in terms of the current
member list
 getState: returns the historical application state associated with the
group
 Building blocks
 This offers higher-level abstractions, building on the underlying service
offered by channels.
2.82 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 Some of the building blocks are:

 MessageDispatcher
- A sender to send a message to a group and then wait for some or
all of the replies.
- MessageDispatcher supports this by providing a castMessage
method that sends a message to a group and blocks until a
specified number of replies are received.
 RpcDispatcher
- This takes a specific method and invokes this method on all
objects associated with a group.
 NotificationBus
- This is an implementation of a distributed event bus, in which an
event is any serializable Java object.
- This class is often used to implement consistency in replicated
caches.
 Protocol stack
 This provides the underlying communication protocol, constructed as a
stack of protocol layers.
 Here, a protocol is a bidirectional stack of protocol layers with each layer
implementing the following two methods:
public Object up (Event evt);
public Object down (Event evt);
 Each layer process the message, including modifying its contents, adding a
header or indeed dropping or reordering the message.
 This shows a protocol that consists of five layers:
- UDP: This is the transport layer that utilizes IP multicast and UDP
datagrams specifically for point-to-point communication. For larger-
scale systems operating over wide area networks, a TCP layer may be
preferred.
- FRAG: This implements message packetization and the maximum
packet size is 8,192 bytes by default.
- MERGE: This deal with unexpected network partitioning and the
subsequent merging of subgroups after the partition.
- GMS: This implements a group membership protocol to maintain
consistent views of membership across the group
- CAUSAL: This implements causal ordering.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.83

2.11 PUBLISH -SUBSCRIBER SYSTEMS

 Publish–subscribe is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called
publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers,
called subscribers.
 Instead, published messages are characterized into classes. The subscribers express
interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages that are of interest.
 The task of the publish subscribe system is to match subscriptions against
published events and ensure the correct delivery of event notifications.
Characteristics of publish-subscribe systems
 Heterogeneity: In distributed environment, the different types of components
are made to interoperate with each other. To maintain integrity an interface is
designed for receiving and dealing with the resultant notifications.
 Asynchronicity: Notifications are sent asynchronously by event-generating
publishers to all the subscribers that have expressed an interest. This avoids the
need for synchronizing.
The programming model
 Publishers disseminate an event e through a publish(e) operation and subscribers
express an interest in a set of events through subscribe(f).
 This refers to a filter or a pattern defined over the set of all possible events.
 Subscribers can later revoke this interest through a corresponding unsubscribe(f)
operation.
 The events are delivered to the subscriber using a notify(e) operation.
 The advertise(f) allows the publishers to have the option of declaring the
nature of future events.

Fig 2.17: Publish Subscriber Model

2.84 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

The following are the subscriber or filter models:

 Channel-based:
 The publishers publish events to named channels and subscribers then
subscribe to one of these named channels to receive all events sent
to that channel.

 Topic-based (subject-based):
 Each notification from the publisher is expressed in terms of a number
of fields, with one field denoting the topic.
 Subscriptions are then defined in terms of the topic of interest.

 Content-based:
 Content-based approaches are a generalization of topic-based
approaches allowing the expression of subscriptions over a range of
fields in an event notification.

 Type-based:
 This is intrinsically linked with object-based approaches where objects
have a specified type.
 In type-based approaches, subscriptions are defined in terms of types of
events and matching is defined in terms of types or subtypes of the
given filter.

Implementation Issues
The publish subscribe model also demands of security, scalability, failure handling,
concurrency and quality of service. This makes this model complex.

Centralized versus distributed implementations

 The centralized implementation of this model is forming a single node with a
server on that node acting as an event broker.
 Publishers then publish events to this broker, and subscribers send subscriptions to
the broker and receive notifications in return.
 Interaction with the broker is then through a series of point-to-point messages; this
can be implemented using message passing or remote invocation.
 This lacks resilience and scalability, since the centralized broker represents a
single point for potential system failure and a performance bottleneck.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.85

Fig 2.17: Network of Brokers

 Alternatively, the centralized broker is replaced by a network of brokers that
cooperate to offer the desired functionality.
 A fully peer-to-peer implementation of a publish-subscribe system is also possible.
 In this approach, there is no distinction between publishers, subscribers and
brokers; all nodes act as brokers, cooperatively implementing the required event
routing functionality.

Overall systems architecture

Fig 2.17: Overall system architecture

2.86 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 In the bottom layer, publish-subscribe systems make use of a range of interprocess

communication services.

 The event routing layer is supported by a network overlay infrastructure. Event

routing performs the task of ensuring that event notifications are routed as
efficiently as possible to appropriate subscribers

 The overlay infrastructure supports this by setting up appropriate networks of

brokers or peer-to-peer structures.

 For content-based approaches, this problem is referred to as content-based

routing (CBR), with the goal being to exploit content information to efficiently
route events to their required destination.

 The top layer implements matching ensure that events match a given subscription.

The general principles behind content-based routing are:

 Flooding:

 Sending an event notification to all nodes in the network and then

carrying out the appropriate matching at the subscriber end is flooding.

 Alternatively, flooding can also be used to send subscriptions back to

all possible publishers, with the matching carried out at the publishing
end and matched events sent directly to the relevant subscribers using
point-to-point communication.

 Flooding can be implemented using an underlying broadcast or

multicast facility or arranging brokers in an acyclic graph in which each
forwards incoming event notifications to all its neighbors.

 Filtering:

 In filtering-based routing, filtering is done in the network of brokers.

 Brokers forward notifications through the network only where there is a

path to a valid subscriber.

 This is achieved by propagating subscription information through the

network towards potential publishers and then storing associated state
at each broker.

 Each node maintains a neighbors list containing a list of all connected

neighbors in the network of brokers, a subscription list containing a list
of all directly connected subscribers serviced by this node, and a
routing table
 Distrubuted Systems 2.87

 When a broker receives a publish request from a given node, it must

pass this notification to all connected nodes where there is a
corresponding matching subscription and also decide where to
propagate this event through the network of brokers.
 This approach can cause heavy traffic due to propagation of
subscription.
 Advertisements:
 Here the advertisements are propagated towards subscribers in a
symmetrical way.
 Rendezvous:
 Here, the set of all possible events are viewed as an event space and
responsibility is partitioned for this event space between the set of
brokers in the network.
 This approach defines rendezvous nodes (broker nodes), that are
responsible for a given subset of the event space.
 The rendezvous-based routing algorithm defines two functions.
 SN(s) takes a given subscription(s), and returns one or more
rendezvous nodes that take responsibility for that subscription. Each
rendezvous node maintains a subscription list and forwards all
matching events to the set of subscribing nodes.
 When an event e is published, the function EN(e) also returns one or
more rendezvous nodes, which are responsible for matching e
against subscriptions in the system.
 Both SN(s) and EN(e) return more than one node if reliability is a
concern.
 This approach works if the intersection of EN(e) and SN(s) is non-
empty for a given e that matches s .

Rendezvous-based routing algorithm

upon receive publish(event e) from node x at node i
rvlist := EN(e);
if i in rvlistthen begin
matchlist<- match(e, subscriptions);
send notify(e) to matchlist;
end
send publish(e) to rvlist - i;
2.88 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

upon receive subscribe(subscription s) from node x at node i

rvlist := SN(s);
if i in rvlistthen
add s to subscriptions;
else
send subscribe(s) to rvlist - i;

2.12 MESSAGE QUEUES

Message Queuing technology enables applications running at different times to
communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline.
Applications send messages to queues and read messages from queues. Message Queuing
provides guaranteed message delivery, efficient routing, security, and priority-based
messaging.
It can be used to implement solutions to both asynchronous and synchronous scenarios
requiring high performance.
Programming Model
Communication in distributed systems is through queues. The producer processes can
send messages to a specific queue and consumer processes can receive messages from this
queue. There are three receiving styles
 blocking receive: block until an appropriate message is available
 non-blocking receive: check the status of the queue and return a message as
available, or not available.
 Notify operation: issue an event notification when a message is available in the
associated queue.
The queue can be build based on FIFO or priority.

Fig 2.17: Message Queue

 Distrubuted Systems 2.89

Properties of message passing system:

 Reliability
 Persistence
 Validity
 Integrity
 Guaranteed delivery
 Atomicity
 Transformation messages between formats to deal with heterogeneity in
underlying data representations.
 Security

Implementation Issues
The important implementation decision for message queuing systems is the choice
between centralized and distributed implementations.

WebSphere MQ
 This is a IBM developed middleware based on the concept of message queues.
 Queues in WebSphere MQ are managed by queue managers which host and
manage queues and allow applications to access queues through the Message
Queue Interface(MQI).

 This allows applications to carry out operations such as connecting to or

disconnecting from a queue (MQCONN and MQDISC) or sending/receiving
messages to/from a queue (MQPUT and MQGET).
 Multiple queue managers can reside on a single physical server. Client applications
can also reside on the same physical server.
 The communication with the queue manager through is known as a client channel.
 MQI commands are issued on the proxy and then sent transparently to the queue
manager for execution using RPC.
 The message channel is a unidirectional connection between two queue managers
that is used to forward messages asynchronously from one queue to another.
 A message channel is managed by a message channel agent (MCA) at each end.
 Routing tables are also included in each queue manager, and together with
channels this allows arbitrary topologies to be created.
2.90 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

Fig 2.17: Network Topology in Websphere

The hub-and-spoke approach
 In the hub-and-spoke topology, one queue manager is designated as the hub.
 Client applications do not connect directly to this hub but rather connect through
queue managers called spokes.
 Spokes relay messages to the message queue of the hub for processing by the
various services.
 Spokes are placed strategically around the network to support different
clients.
 The hub is placed on a node with sufficient resources to deal with the volume of
traffic.
 This topology is heavily used with WebSphere MQ for large-scale deployments.
 The drawback of this architecture is that the hub can be a potential bottleneck and
a single point of failure.

2.12.1 Java Messaging Services (JMS)

 The Java Messaging Service (JMS) is a standardized way for distributed Java
programs to communicate indirectly.
 This unifies the publish-subscribe and message queue paradigms.

 A JMS client is a Java program or component that produces or consumes

messages.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.91

Programming with JMS

 First create a connection between a client program and the provider through a
connection factory.
 This is a logical channel between the client and provider.

 There are two types of connection can be established: Topic Connection or Queue
Connection.
 TopicConnection: support one or more topic sessions
 QueueConnection: support one or more queue sessions
 Connections can be used to create one or more sessions.
 A session is a series of operations involving the creation, production and
consumption of messages related to a logical task.

Fig 2.18: JMS Programming Model

Parts of a JMS Message
There are three parts: a header, a set of properties and the body of the message.

 Header
 The header contains all the information needed to identify and route the
message: destination, priority, expiration date, a message ID and a
timestamp.
2.92 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 These fields are either created by the underlying system, or constructor

methods.
 The properties can be used to express additional context associated with the
message, including a location field.
 Body
 The body is opaque and untouched by the system.
 The body can be any one of a text message, a byte stream, a serialized
Java object, a stream of primitive Java values or a more structured set of
name/value pairs.
 A message producer is an object used to publish messages under a
particular topic or to send messages to a queue.
 A message consumer is an object used to subscribe to messages concerned
with a given topic or to receive messages from a queue.
 The consumer is complicated:

 Consumers apply message filters.

 Consumer program either can block using a receive operation or it

can establish a message listener object that identifies a message.

2.13 SHARED MEMORY APPROACHES

They are indirect communication paradigms that offer an abstraction of shared
memory.

Distributed shared memory (DSM)

Fig 2.18: Distributed Shared Memory

 Distrubuted Systems 2.93

 This is an abstraction used for sharing data between computers that do not share
physical memory.
 Processes access DSM by reads and updates to what appears to be ordinary
memory within their address space.
 The programmer need not worry about the message passing.
 DSM runtime support has to send updates in messages between computers.
 DSM systems must also manage replicated data.
 Each computer has a local copy of recently accessed data items stored in DSM, for
speed of access.

Message passing versus DSM

The message passing and DSM can be compared based on services they offer and in
terms of their efficiency.

Message Passing Distributed Shared Memory

Services Offered:
Variables have to be marshalled The processes share variables directly, so
from one process, transmitted and no marshalling and unmarshalling. Shared
unmarshalled into other variables at the variables can be named, stored and
receiving process. accessed in DSM.

Processes can communicate with other Here, a process does not have private
processes. They can be protected from one address space. So one process can alter the
another by having private address spaces. execution of other.
This technique can be used in This cannot be used to heterogeneous
heterogeneous computers. computers.
Synchronization between processes is Synchronization is through locks and
through message passing primitives. semaphores.
Processes communicating via message Processes communicating through DSM
passing must execute at the same time. may execute with non-overlapping
lifetimes.
Efficiency:
All remote data accesses are explicit and Any particular read or update may or may
therefore the programmer is always aware not involve communication by the
of whether a particular operation is in- underlying runtime support.
process or involves the expense of
communication.
2.94 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

2.13.1 Tuple space communication

Processes communicate indirectly by placing tuples in a tuple space, from which other
processes can read or remove them.
The programming model
 Processes communicate through a shared collection of tuples.
 Any combination of types of tuples may exist in the same tuple space.
 Processes share data by accessing the same tuple space.
 The tuples are stored in tuple space using the write operation and read or extract
them from tuple space using the reador take operation.
 No direct access to tuples in tuple space is allowed and processes have to replace
tuples in the tuple space instead of modifying them. Thus, tuples are immutable.
Properties of tuple space
 Space uncoupling: A tuple placed in tuple space may originate from any number
of sender processes and may be delivered to any one of a number of potential
recipients.
 Time uncoupling: A tuple placed in tuple space will remain in that tuple space
until removed and hence the sender and receiver do not need to overlap in time.
Implementation Issues
Centralized solution where the tuple space resource is managed by a single server is a
common implementation.
Replication:
 A tuple space behaves like a state machine, maintaining state and changing this
state in response to events received from other replicas or from the environment.
 To ensure consistency the replicas
(ii) Must start in the same state
(iii) must execute events in the same order
(iv) must react deterministically to each event.
 Alternatively, a multicast algorithm can be used.
 Here, updates are carried out in the context of the agreed set of replicas and
tuples are also partitioned into distinct tuple sets based on their associated logical
names.
 The system consists of a set of workers carrying out computations on the tuple
space, and a set of tuple space replicas.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.95
 A given physical node can contain any number of workers, replicas or indeed both;
a given worker therefore may or may not have a local replica.
 Nodes are connected by a communications network that may lose, duplicate or
delay messages and can deliver messages out of order.
 A write operation is implemented by sending a multicast message over the
unreliable communications channel to all members of the view.
 The write request is repeated until all acknowledgements are received.
 The read operation consists of sending a multicast message to all replicas.

Write
1. The requesting site multicasts the write request to all members of the view;
2. On receiving this request, members insert the tuple into their replica and
acknowledge this action;
3. Step 1 is repeated until all acknowledgements are received.

Read
1. The requesting site multicasts the read request to all members of the view;
2. On receiving this request, a member returns a matching tuple to the requestor;
3. The requestor returns the first matching tuple received as the result of the operation
(ignoring others);
4. Step 1 is repeated until at least one response is received.
Phase 1: Selecting the tuple to be removed
1. The requesting site multicasts the take request to all members of the view;
2. On receiving this request, each replica acquires a lock on the associated tuple set
and, if the lock cannot be acquired, the take request is rejected;
3. All accepting members reply with the set of all matching tuples;
4. Step 1 is repeated until all sites have accepted the request and responded with their
set of tuples and the intersection is non-null;
5. A particular tuple is selected as the result of the operation .
6. If only a minority accept the request, this minority are asked to release their locks
and phase 1 repeats.
Phase 2: Removing the selected tuple
1. The requesting site multicasts a remove request to all members of the view citing
the tuple to be removed;
2.96 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

2. On receiving this request, members remove the tuple from their replica, send an
acknowledgement and release the lock;
3. Step 1 is repeated until all acknowledgements are received

2.14 DISTRIBUTED OBJECTS

Distributed object communication realizes communication between distributed
objects in the distributed computing environment. The main role is to interconnect objects
residing in non-local memory space and allow them to perform remote calls and exchange
data. Distributed object middleware offers a programming abstraction based on object
oriented principles.
The following table gives a brief description about relation between objects and
distributed objects:

Objects Distributed Objects Descriptions

Object references Remote object Unique reference for each distributed object.
references
Interfaces Remote interfaces Provides methods to be invoked o remote
object using DLL.
Actions Distributed actions Invocation of methods
Exceptions Distributed Exception Includes exceptions generated in distributed
environment
Garbage Collection Distributed Garbage Implements distributed garbage collection
Collection algorithm

Differences between objects and distributed objects

Objects Distributed Objects

Class is a fundamental concept in object- Classes are not prominent here.
oriented languages.
In the object oriented world, class can be the Here the term „class‟ is avoided, more
description of the behavior associated with a specific terms such as „factory‟ and
group of objects or, the place to go to „template‟ are readily used.
instantiate an object with a given behavior or
even the group of objects that adhere
to that behavior.
Object oriented languages offer This offers interface inheritances.
implementation inheritances
 Distrubuted Systems 2.97

Additional Complexities
 Inter-object communication:
 This is normally provided by remote method invocation.
 Lifecycle management:
 Lifecycle management is concerned with the creation, migration and deletion
of objects, with each step having to deal with the distributed nature of the
underlying environment.
 Activation and deactivation:
 In distributed systems, the numbers of objects may be very large, and hence it
would be waste of resources to have all objects available (active) at any time.
 Activation is the process of making an object active in the distributed
environment by providing the necessary resources for it to process incoming
invocations.
 Deactivation is rendering an object temporarily unable to process invocations.
 Persistence:
 Objects have state, and it maintains this state across possible cycles of
activation and deactivation and indeed system failures.
 Distributed object middleware must therefore offer persistency management
for stateful objects.
 Additional services:
 This must provide support for the range of distributed system services
considered in this book, including naming, security and transaction services.

2.15 FROM OBJECTS TO COMPONENTS

Component based computing is out powering distributed objects.

Problems in object-oriented middleware

The following four problems in object oriented middleware led to the development of
component based technology:

 Implicit dependencies:
 A distributed object communicates with outside world through interfaces.

 The interfaces provide a complete contract for the deploying and use of this
object.
2.98 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The problem in distributed objects is that the internal behavior of an

object is hidden.
 Implicit dependencies in the distributed configuration are not safe.
 The third-party developers to implement one particular element in a
distributed configuration.
Requirement: Dependencies of the object with otherobjects in the distributed
configuration must be specified.
 Interaction with the middleware:
 The distributed objects must interact even with low-levelmiddleware
architecture.
Requirement: While programming distributed applications, a clean separation
must be made between code related to middleware framework and code
associated with the application.
 Lack of separation of distribution concerns:
 Distributed programmers must also focus on issues related to security,
transactions, coordination and replication.
 To provide the non functional requirements :
 Programmers must have knowledge of the full details of all the
associated distributed system services.
 The implementation of an object will contain calls to distributed system
services and to middleware interfaces. This increases the programming
complexity.
Requirement: These complexities should be hidden from the
programmer.
 No support for deployment:
 Objects must be deployed manually on individual machines and activated
when required.
 This is a tiresome and error-prone process.
Requirement: Middleware platforms should support deployment.

2.15.1 Fundamentals of Components

A software component is a unit of composition with contractually specified

interfaces and explicit context dependencies only.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.99

The term contract refers to:

 a set of provided interfaces
 a set of required interfaces
Every required interface must be bound to a provided interface of another
component. This is called software architecture. This consists of components, interfaces and
connections between interfaces.

Programming in component-based systems is concerned with the development of

components and their composition. So third party development of software components is
possible in component based technology (CBT).

Advantages of CBT
 Independent extensions
 Component Market
 Component models lessen unanticipated interactions between components
 Reduced time to market
 Reduced Costs

Disadvantages of CBT:
 Time to develop software components takes a big effort.
 Components can be pricey.

 Requirements in component technologies lacking

 Conflict between usability and reusability of components.
 Maintenance cost for components increased

Components and distributed systems Containers:

 The containers are absolutely central to component-based middleware.
 Containers support a common pattern often encountered in distributed
applications, which consists of:

o a front-end client
o a container holding one or more components that implement the application
or business logic
o system services that manage the associated data in persistent storage.
2.100 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The containers provide a managed server-side hosting environment for

components.
 The components deal with application concerns and the container deals with
distributed systems and middleware issues.
 A container includes a number of components that require the same configuration
in terms of distributed system support.
Support for Deployment
 Component-based middleware supports the deployment of component
configurations.
 They include releases of software architectures (components and their
interconnections) together with deployment descriptors.
 These descriptors describe how the configurations should be deployed in a
distributed environment.
 Deployment descriptors are typically written in XML and include sufficient
information to ensure that:
o components are correctly connected using appropriate protocols and
associated middleware support
o the underlying middleware and platform are configured to provide the right
level of support to the component configuration
o the associated distributed system services are set up to provide the right
level of security, transaction support and so on.

2.16 ENTERPRISE JAVA BEANS

 Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is a specification of a server-side, managed
component architecture
 It supports the development of the classic style of application, where
potentially large numbers of clients interact with a number of services realized
through components or configuration of components.
 The components, which are known as beans in EJB, are intended to capture the
application (or business) logic

 The container in EJB issues calls to the associated services to provide the
required properties.
 Beans act as:
 Container Managed: The transaction manager or security services is
completely hidden from the developer of the associated beans.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.101

 Bean Managed: The bean developer takes control over these operations
not the transaction manager.
 The EJB specification has the following roles:
o bean provider: develops the application logic of the component(s)
o application assembler: assembles beans into application configurations
o deployer: takes a given application assembly and ensures it can be
correctly deployed in a given operational environment;
o service provider: does transaction management
o persistence provider: maps persistent data to databases
o container provider: build on the above two roles and is responsible for
configuring containers with the required level of distributed systems
support in terms of non-functional properties
o system administrator: responsible for monitoring a deployment at
runtime and making any adjustments to ensure its correct operation.
The EJB component model
 A bean in EJB is a component offering one or more business interfaces to
potential clients of that component.
 A bean is represented by the set of remote and local business interfaces
together with an associated bean class that implements the interfaces.
 Two main styles of bean are supported in the EJB specification:
 Session beans: A session bean is a component implementing a
particular task within the application logic of a service.
 Message-driven beans: Clients interact with session beans using local
or remote invocation.
POJOs and annotations
The task of programming in EJB has been simplified significantly through the use of
Enterprise JavaBean POJOs(plain old Java objects). It consists of the application
logic written simply in Java with no other code relating to it being a bean. Annotations
are then used to ensure the correct behaviour in the EJB context. Enterprise JavaBean
containers in EJB
 Beans are deployed to containers, and the containers provide implicit distributed
system management.
 The container provides the policies in areas including transaction management,
security, persistence and lifecycle management.
2.102 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 The developer needs to focus only on application logic.

 EJB manages transactions.
 Transactions are sequences of operations, and that the sequences must be identified
by the transaction manager.
 The first thing to declare is whether transactions associated with an enterprise bean
should be bean-managed or container-managed. @TransactionManagement
(BEAN)@TransactionManagement (CONTAINER)
 The bean managed transaction uses the following methods:
 javax.transaction.UserTransaction– the User.Transaction.begin
 UserTransaction.commitmethods – within the code of the bean.

Transaction Attributes in EJB

Attribute Policy
REQUIRED If the client has an associated transaction running, execute
within this transaction; otherwise, start a new transaction.
REQUIRES_NEW Always start a new transaction for this invocation.
SUPPORTS If the client has an associated transaction, execute the method within
the context of this transaction; if not, the call proceeds without any
transaction support.
NOT_SUPPORTED If the client calls the method from within a transaction, then
this transaction is suspended before calling the method and
resumed afterwards – that is, the invoked method is excluded
from the transaction.
MANDATORY The associated method must be called from within a client
transaction; if not, an exception is thrown.
NEVER The associated methods must not be called from within a
client transaction; if this is attempted, an exception is
thrown

Dependency injection:
 In dependency injection a third party (container), is responsible for managing and
resolving the relationships between a component and its dependencies.
 A component refers to a dependency using an annotation and the container is
responsible for resolving this annotation and ensuring that, at runtime, the
associated attribute refers to the right object.
 This is typically implemented by the container usingreflection.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.103

Enterprise JavaBean Interception

The Enterprise JavaBeans allows interception of two types of operation to alter their
default behavior:
• method calls associated with a business interface

• life cycle events.

Invocation Contexts

Method Description

public Object getTarget() Returns the bean instance associated with the incoming
invocation or event

public Method getMethod() Returns the method being invoked

public Object[] getParameters() Returns the set of parameters associated with the
intercepted business method

public void setParameters Allows the parameter set to be altered by theinterceptor,

(Object[] params) assuming type correctness ismaintained

public Object proceed() throws Execution proceeds to next interceptor in the chain
Exception (if any) or the method that has been intercepted
2.104 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem
REVIEW QUESTIONS
PART-A
1. What is IPC?
Interprocess communication (IPC) is a set of programming interfaces that allows a
programmer to coordinate activities among different program processes that can run
concurrently in an operating system.

2. List the models in distributed system.

 Physical models: It is the most explicit way in which to describe a system in terms
of hardware composition.

 Architectural models: They describe a system in terms of the computational and

communication tasks performed by its computational elements.

 Fundamental models: They examine individual aspects of a distributed system.

They are again classified based on some parameters as follows:

 Interaction models: This deals with the structure and sequencing of the
communication between the elements of the system

 Failure models: This deals with the ways in which a system may fail to operate
correctly

 Security models: This deals with the security measures implemented in the
system against attempts to interfere with its correct operation or to steal its
data.

3. Define ULS.

The ultra large scale (ULS) distributed systems is defined as a complex system
consisting of a series of subsystems that are systems in their own right and that come
together to perform a particular task or tasks.

4. What are the characteristics of ULS?

 very large size

 global geographical distribution

 operational and managerial independence of their member systems.

5. What are the evaluation elements of architectural model?

Architectural elements, architectural patterns and middleware platforms.

 Distrubuted Systems 2.105

6. What are the architectural entities?

 Communicating entities (objects, components and web services);
 Communication paradigms (inter process communication, remote invocation and
indirect communication);
 Roles responsibilities and placement
7. What are the communicating entities in architectural model?
 Objects: They are used to implement object oriented approaches in distributed
systems. Objects are accessed through interfaces.
 Components: Components resemble objects and they offer problem-oriented
abstractions for building distributed systems. They are also accessed through
interfaces. The key difference between component and object is that a components
holds all the assumptions specified to other components and their interfaces in the
system. Components and objects are used to develop tightly coupled applications.
 Web services: Web services are closelyrelated to objects and components. Web
services areintegrated into the World Wide Web. They are partially defined by the
web-based technologies theyadopt. Web services are generally viewed as complete
servicesthat can be combined to achieve value-added services across
organizational boundaries.
8. List the communication mechanisms in DS.
IPC, Remote invocation and indirect communication.
9. Give the features of IPC.
This has the following two key features:
 Space uncoupling: Senders do not need to know who they are sending to
 Time uncoupling: Senders and receivers do not need to exist at the same time
10. What is Group communication?
Group communication is concerned with the delivery of messages to a set of recipients
and hence is a multiparty communication paradigm supporting one-to-many
communication. A group identifier uniquely identifies the group. The recipients join
the group and receive the messages. Senders send messages to the group based on the
group identifier and hence do not need to know the recipients of the message.
11. What are Publish-subscribe systems?
This is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called publishers, do not
program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers, called subscribers.
Instead, published messages are characterized into classes, without knowledge of
what, subscribers there may be. Similarly, subscribers express interest in one or more
classes, and only receive messages that are of interest, without knowledge of what, if
any, publishers there are. They offer one-to-many style of communication.
2.106 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

12. What are Message queues?

They offer a point-to-point service whereby producer processes can send messages to
a specified queue and consumer processes can receive messages from the queue or be
notified of the arrival of new messages in the queue. Queues therefore offer an
indirection between the producer and consumer processes.
13. What are Tuple spaces?
The processes can place arbitrary items of structured data, called tuples, in a persistent
tuple space and other processes can either read or remove such tuples from the tuple
space by specifying patterns of interest. This style of programming is known as
generative communication.
14. Write about Distributed shared memory.
In computer architecture, distributed shared memory (DSM) is a form of memory
architecture where the (physically separate) memories can be addressed as one
(logically shared) address space. Here, the term shared does not mean that there is a
single centralized memory but shared essentially means that the address space is
shared (same physical address on two processors refers to the same location in
memory
15. What are the architectures based on roles and responsibilities?
Client server and peer to peer.
16. What are the strategies for placement of objects?
 Mapping of services to multiple servers
 Caching
 Mobile code
 Mobile agents
17. What is mobile code?
Applets are a well-known and widely used example of mobile code. The user running
a browser selects a link to an applet whose code is stored on a web server; the code is
downloaded to the browser and runs. They provide interactive response.
18. What are mobile agents?
A mobile agent is a running program (including both code and data) that travels from
one computer to another in a network carrying out a task on someone‟s behalf, such as
collecting information, and eventually returning with the results. A mobile agent is a
complete program, code + data, that can work (relatively) independently.
19. What is layering?
In a layered approach, a complex system is partitioned into a number of layers, with a
given layer making use of the services offered by the layer below.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.107

20. Define tiering.

Tiering is a technique to organize functionality of a given layer and place this
functionality into appropriate servers and, as a secondary consideration, on to physical
nodes.

21. Write about two tier architecture.

The two tiered architecture refers to client/server architectures in which the user
interface (presentation layer) runs on the client and the database (data layer) is stored
on the server. The actual application logic can run on either the client or the server.

22. Write about three tier architecture.

Presentation tier: This is the topmost level of the application. is concerned with
handling user interaction and updating the view of the application as presented to the
user;
Application tier (business logic, logic tier, or middle tier): The logical tier is pulled out
from the presentation tier and, as its own layer, it controls an application‟s
functionality by performing detailed processing.
Data tier: The data tier includes the data persistence mechanisms (database servers, file
shares, etc.) and the data access layer that encapsulates the persistence mechanisms
and exposes the data.

23. Define thin client.

In a thin-client model, all of the application processing and data management is carried
out on the server. The client is simply responsible for running the responsible for
running the presentation software. This is used when legacy systems are migrated to
client server architectures.

24. What is VNC?

The virtual network computing (VNC) has emerged to overcome the disadvantages of
thin clients. VNC is a type of remote-control software that makes it possible to control
another computer over a network connection.

25. What is Proxy?

 This facilitates location transparency in remote procedure calls or remote method
invocation.
 A proxy is created in the local address space to represent the remote object with
same interface as the remote object.
 The programmer makes calls on this proxy object and he need not be aware of the
distributed nature of the interaction.
2.108 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

26. Define Brokerage.

 It is used to bring interoperability in potentially complex distributed
infrastructures.
 The service broker is meant to be a registry of services, and stores information
about what services are available and who may use them.
27. What is reflection?
 The Reflection architectural pattern provides a mechanism for changing structure
and behaviour of software systems dynamically.
 It supports the modification of fundamental aspects, such as type structures and
function call mechanisms.
28. What are the levels in reflection?
Meta Level: This provides information about selected system properties and makes the
software self-aware.
Base level: This includes the application logic. Its implementation builds on the meta
level. Changes to information kept in the meta level affect subsequent base-level
behavior.
29. Define middleware.
Middleware is a general term for software that serves to "glue together" separate, often
complex and already existing, programs.
30. What are Distributed Objects?
The term distributed objects usually refers to software modules that are designed to
work together, but reside either in multiple computers connected via a network or in
different processes inside the same computer. One object sends a message to another
object in a remote machine or process to perform some task. The results are sent back
to the calling object.
31. What are Distributed Components?
A component is a reusable program building block that can be combined with other
components in the same or other computers in a distributed network to form an
application. Examples: a single button in a graphical user interface, a small interest
calculator, an interface to a database manager. Components can be deployed on
different servers in a network and communicate with each other for needed services. A
component runs within a context called a container . Examples: pages on a Web site,
Web browsers, and word processors.
32. Write about Publish subscriber model.
Publish–subscribe is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called
publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers, called
 Distrubuted Systems 2.109

subscribers. Instead, published messages are characterized into classes, without

knowledge of what, if any, subscribers there may be. Similarly, subscribers express
interest in one or more classes, and only receive messages that are of interest, without
knowledge of what publishers are there.
33. Write about Message Queues.
Message queues provide an asynchronous communications protocol, meaning that the
sender and receiver of the message do not need to interact with the message queue at
the same time. Messages placed onto the queue are stored until the recipient retrieves
them. Message queues have implicit or explicit limits on the size of data that may be
transmitted in a single message and the number of messages that may remain
outstanding on the queue.

34. Define Web services.

A web service is a collection of open protocols and standards used for exchanging
data between applications or systems. Software applications written in various
programming languages and running on various platforms can use web services to
exchange data over computer networks like the Internet in a manner similar to inter-
process communication on a single computer. This interoperability (e.g., between Java
and Python, or Windows and Linux applications) is due to the use of open standards.

35. What is Peer to peer computing?

Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture
that partitions tasks or work load between peers. Peers are equally privileged,
equipotent participants in the application. They are said to form a peer-to-peer network
of nodes.

36. List the advantages of middleware

 Real time information access among systems.
 Streamlines business processes and helps raise organizational efficiency.
 Maintains information integrity across multiple systems.

 It covers a wide range of software systems, including distributed Objects and

components, message-oriented communication, and mobile application support.
 Middleware is anything that helps developers create networked applications.

37. List the disadvantages of middleware

 Prohibitively high development costs.
 There are only few people with experience in the market place to develop and use
a middleware.
2.110 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

 There are only few satisfying standards.

 The tools are not good enough.
 Too many platforms to be covered.
 Middleware often threatens the real-time performance of a system.

 Middleware products are not very mature.

38. Define fundamental models.

Fundamental Models are concerned with a formal description of the properties that are
common in all of the architectural models.

39. What are the types of fundamental models?

Interaction Model – deals with performance and the difficulty of setting of time limits
in a distributed system.
Failure Model – specification of the faults that can be exhibited by processes
Secure Model – discusses possible threats to processes and communication channels.

40. Give the purpose of the fundamental model.

 Make explicit all the relevant assumptions about the systems we are modelling.
 Make generalizations (general purpose algorithms) concerning what is possible or
impossible with given assumptions.
41. What are the communication performance metrics?
a. Latency: A delay between the start of a message‟s transmission from one process
to the beginning of reception by another.
b. Bandwidth: The total amount of information that can be transmitted over in a given
time. The communication channels using the same network, have to share the
available bandwidth.
c. Jitter: The variation in the time taken to deliver a series of messages. It is very
relevant to multimedia data.

42. What is synchronous DS?

 This is practically hard to achieve in real life.
 In synchronous DS the time taken to execute a step of a process has known lower
and upper bounds.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.111

 Each message transmitted over a channel is received within a known bounded

time.
 Each process has a local clock whose drift rate from real time has known bound.

43. What is Asynchronous DS?

 There are no bounds on: process execution speeds, message transmission delays
and clock drift rates.

44. What are the common types of failures?

 Omission Failure
 Arbitrary Failure
 Timing Failure
45. What is Omission failure?
Omission failures occur due to communication link failures. They are detected through
timeouts.
46. Write about Process omission failures.
 Omission failures that occur due to process crash (i.e.) the execution of the process
could not continue.

 This is detected using timeouts.

 A fixed period of time is fixed for all the methods to complete its execution. If the
method takes time longer than the allowed time, a time out has occurred.
 In an asynchronous system a timeout can indicate only that a process is not
responding.
 A process crash is called fail-stopif other processes can detect certainly that the
process has crashed.
 Fail-stop behavior can be produced in a synchronous system if the processes use
timeouts to detect when other processes fail to respond and messages are
guaranteed to be delivered.

47. Write about Communication omission failures.

 This occurs when the messages are dropped between sender and the receiver.
 The message can be lost in sender buffer, receiver buffer or even in the
communication channel.
2.112 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

48. What is send omission failure?

The loss of messages between the sending process and the outgoing message buffer is
known as send omission failures.

49. What is receive-omission failure?

The loss of messages between the incoming message buffer and the receiving process
as receive-omission failures.

50. What is channel omission failure?

The loss of messages in a channel is channel omission failure.

51. What are Arbitrary failures (Byzantine failure)?

This includes all possible errors that could cause failure.

52. Classify the arbitrary failures.

Class Affects Comments

Fail stop Process Process halts and remains halted. Other
processes may detect that this process has
halted.

Crash Process Process halts and remains halted. Other

processes may not detect that this process
has halted.

Omission Channel A message inserted in an outgoing

message buffer never arrives at the other
end‟s incoming messagebuffer.

Send-omission Process A process completes a send operation but

the message is not put in its outgoing
message buffer.

Receiveomission Process A message is put in a process‟s incoming

messagebuffer, but that process does not
receive it.

Arbitrary Process Process/channel exhibits arbitrary

or behaviour: it may send/transmit arbitrary
messages at arbitrary times or commit
channel omissions; a process may stop or take an
incorrect step.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.113

53. Define timing failure.

Timing failures refer to a situation where the environment in which a system operates
does not behave as expected regarding the timing assumptions, that is,
the timing constraints are not met.
54. Define reliable communication.
The term reliable communication is defined in terms of validity and integrity.
 Validity: Any message in the outgoing message buffer is eventually delivered to
the incoming message buffer.
 Integrity: The message received is identical to one sent, and no messages are
delivered twice.
55. What is security model?
The security of a DS can be achieved by securing the processes and the channels used
in their interactions and by protecting the objects that they encapsulate against
unauthorized access.
56. What is DOS attack?
Denial of service (DoS) attack is an incident in which a user or organization is
deprived of the services of a resource they would normally expect to have. In a
distributed denial-of-service, large numbers of compromised systems (sometimes
called a botnet) attack a single target.
57. Define IPC.
Interprocess communication (IPC) is a set of programming interfaces that allow a
programmer to coordinate activities among different program processes that can run
concurrently in an operating system.
58. What are the characteristics of IPC?
Characteristics of IPC:
 Synchronous and asynchronous communication
 Message destinations
 Reliability
 Ordering
59. Define socket.
A socket is one endpoint of a two-way communication link between two programs
unning on the network.
2.114 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

60. What are the UDP failure modes?

UDP datagrams suffer from following failures:
 Omission failure: Messages may be dropped occasionally
 Ordering: Messages can be delivered out of order.
61. List the issues in stream communication.
Matching of data items: Two communicating processes need to agree as to the
contents of the data transmitted over a stream.
Blocking: The process that writes data to a stream may be blocked by the TCP flow-
control mechanism if the socket at the other end is queuing as much data as the
protocol allows.
Threads: When a server accepts a connection, it generally creates a new thread in
which to communicate with the new client. In an environment in which threads are not
provided, an alternative is to test whether input is available from a stream before
attempting to read it;
62. Define external data representation.
External Data Representation is an agreed standard for the representation of data
structures and primitive values.
63. Define marshalling and unmarshalling.
Marshalling is the process of taking a collection of data items and assembling them
into a form suitable for transmission in a message. Unmarshalling is the process of
disassembling a collection of data on arrival to produce an equivalent collection of
data items at the destination.
64. Define reflection.
Reflection is inquiring about class properties, e.g., names, types of methods and
variables, of objects
65. List the requirements of remote object reference.
The following are mandatory for remote object reference
 internet address/port number: process which created object
 time: creation time
 object number: local counter, incremented each time an object is created in the
creating process
 interface: how to access the remote object (if object reference is passed from one
client to another)
 Distrubuted Systems 2.115

66. Define multi cast communication.

Multicast (one-to-many or many-to-many distribution) is group communication where
information is addressed to a group of destination computers simultaneously.
67. List the characteristics of multicasting.
The following are the characteristics of multicasting:
 Fault tolerance based on replicated services:
 Finding the discovery servers in spontaneous networking
 Better performance through replicated data
 Propagation of event notifications
68. What is IP multicast?
IP multicast is built on top of the Internet protocol. IP multicast allows the sender to
transmit a single IP packet to a multicast group. A multicast group is specified by class
D IP address with1110 as it starting byte.
69. List some methods in MulticastSocket class.
 getInterface():Retrieve the address of the network interface used for multicast
packets.
 getTTL():Get the default time-to-live for multicast packets sent out on the socket.
 joinGroup(InetAddress): Joins a multicast group.
 leaveGroup(InetAddress):Leave a multicast group.
 send(DatagramPacket, byte):Sends a datagram packet to the destination, with a
TTL (time- to-live) other than the default for the socket.
 setInterface(InetAddress): Set the outgoing network interface for multicast packets
on this socket, to other than the system default.
 setTTL(byte): Set the default time-to-live for multicast packets sent out on this
socket.
70. Define network virtualization.
Network virtualization refers to the management and monitoring of an entire computer
network as a single administrative entity from a single software-based administrator‟s
console.
71. Define overlay network.
An overlay network is a virtual network of nodes and logical links that is built on top
of an existing network with the purpose to implement a network service that is not
available in the existing network.
2.116 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

72. List the Advantages of overlay network.

 They enable new network services to be defined without requiring changes to the
underlying network.
 They encourage experimentation with network services and the customization of
services to particular classes of application.
 Multiple overlays can be defined and can coexist, with the end result being a more
open and extensible network architecture.
73. List the disadvantages of overlay network.
 They introduce an extra level of indirection.
 They add to the complexity of network services
74. Define message passing interface.
Message Passing Interface (MPI) is a standardized and portable message-passing
system to function on a wide variety of parallel computers.
75. What are the types of message passing?
 Synchronous message passing: This is implemented by blocking send and receive
calls.
 Asynchronous message passing: This is implemented by a non-blocking form of
send.
76. What is remote invocation?
Remote invocations are method invocations for objects in different processes.
77. What are remote objects?
Remote objects are objects that can receive remote invocation. The core part of the
distributed object model is:
- remote object reference;
- remote interface: specifies which methods can be invoked remotely;
78. Give the advantages of UDP over TCP.
UDP is preferred over TCP for the following reasons:
 Acknowledgements are redundant, since requests are followed by replies.
 Establishing a connection involves two extra pairs of messages in addition to the
pair required for a request and a reply.
 Flow control is redundant for the majority of invocations, which pass only small
arguments and results.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.117

79. What is message id?

Each message have a unique message identifier for referencing it. A message identifier
consists of two parts:
 request Id: Increasing sequence of integers assigned by the sending process. This
makes the message unique to the sender.
 an identifier: for the sender process. This makes the message unique in the
distributed system.
80. What is history of messages?
History is used to refer to a structure that contains a record of reply messages that have
been transmitted by the server.
81. List the styles of exchange protocols.
There are three exchange protocols:
 request (R) protocol: a single request message is sent by the client to the server
 request-reply (RR) protocol: used in client-server exchanges because it is based on
the request-reply protocol. Special acknowledgement messages are not required.
 request-reply-acknowledge reply (RRA) protocol: It is based on request-reply-
acknowledge reply. The Acknowledge reply message contains the requested from
the reply message being acknowledged. This will enable the server to discard
entries from its history. The arrival of a requested in an acknowledgement message
will be interpreted as acknowledging the receipt of all reply messages with lower
request Ids.
82. Give the differences between persistent and non persistent connections

Persistent Connection Non persistent Connection

On the same TCP connection the The server parses request, responds, and
server, parses request, responds and closes TCP connection.
waits for new requests.
It takes fewer RTTs to fetch the It takes 2 RTTs to fetch each object.
objects.
It has less slow start. Each object transfer suffers from slow start

83. Define RPC.

Remote Procedure Call (RPC) is a protocol that one program can use to request a
service from a program located in another computer in a network without having to
understand network details.
2.118 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

84. List the design issues of RPC.

The following are the design issues in RPC:
 Programming with interfaces
 Interfaces in distributed systems
 Interface definition languages:
 RPC call semantics

85. Define stub.

A stub is a piece of code that is used to convert parameters during a remote procedure
call (RPC). An RPC allows a client computer to remotely call procedures on a server
computer.

86. Define RMI.

RMI is a set of protocols being developed by Sun's JavaSoft division that
enables Java objects to communicate remotely with other Java objects.

87. List the differences between RMI and RPC

RMI RPC

RMI uses an object oriented paradigm RPC is not object oriented and does not
where the user needs to know the object deal with objects. Rather, it calls specific
and the method of the object he needs subroutines that are already established
to invoke.

With RPC looks like a local call. RPC RMI handles the complexities of passing
handles the complexities involved with along the invocation from the local to the
passing the call from the local to the remote computer. But instead of passing a
remote computer. procedural call, RMI passes a reference to
the object and the method that is being
called.

88. Give the Limitations of RMI

 RMI is not language independent. It is limited only to Java.

 Interfaces to remote objects are defined using ordinary Java interfaces not with special
IDLs.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.119

89. Give the differences between Interfaces and Class

Interfaces Class
Interfaces cannot be instantiated. Classes can be instantiated.
They do not contain constructors. They can have constructors.
They cannot have instance fields (i.e.) all No constraints over the fields.
the fields in an interface must be declared
both static and final.
The interface can contain only abstract They can contain method
method. implementation.
Interfaces are implemented by a class not Classes are extended by other
extended. classes.

90. What is remote object reference?

A remote object reference is an identifier that can be used throughout a distributed
system to refer to a particular unique remote object.

91. Give the differences between remote and local objects

Remote Objects Local Objects

Creating a remote object requires creating a They consume less time cycles.
stub and a skeleton, which will cost more
time cycles.
Marshalling and unmarshalling is required. Marshalling and unmarshalling is not
required.
Longer time is taken by the remote object to Comparatively shorter return time.
return to the calling program.

92. What is reference counting?

Distributed garbage collection is usually based on reference counting. The total
number of references to the object is maintained by a reference count field.

93. Give the use of Proxy in RMI.

The class of the proxy contains a method corresponding to each method in the remote
interface which marshalls arguments and unmarshalls results for that method. It hides
the details of the remote object reference. Each method of the proxy marshals a
reference to the target object using a request message (operationId, arguments). When
the reply is received the proxy, unmarshals it and returns the results to the invoker.
2.120 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

94. Give the use of Dispatcher in RMI.

Server has a dispatcher & a skeleton for each class of remote object. The dispatcher
receives the incoming message, and uses its method info to pass it to the right method
in the skeleton.
95. Give the use of Skeleton in RMI.
Skeleton implements methods of the remote interface to unmarshall arguments and
invoke the corresponding method in the servant. It then marshalls the result (or any
exceptions thrown) into a reply message to the proxy.
96. What are factory methods?
Factory methods are static methods that return an instance of the native class.Factory
method is used to create different object from factory often refereed as Item and it
encapsulate the creation code.
97. List the responsibilities of activator.
Responsibilities of an activator:
 Registering passive objects that are available for activation. This is done by mapping
the names of servers and passive objects.
 Starting named server processes and activating remote objects in them.
 Tracking the locations of the servers for remote objects that it has alreadyactivated.
 Java RMI provides the ability to make some remote objects activatable
[java.sun.comIX].
98. Define persistent object.
An object that is guaranteed to live between activations of processes is called a
persistent object.
99. What is Jini?
Jini provides a mechanism for locating services on the network that conform to a
particular (Java) interface, or that have certain attributes associated with them. Once a
service is located, the client can download an implementation of that interface, which
it then uses to communicate with the service.
100. What is callback?
Callbackrefers to a server‟s action of notifying clients about an event.
101. Define group communication.
Group communication is a service where a message is sent to a group and then this
message is delivered to all members of the group.
 Distrubuted Systems 2.121

102. What is publish subscribe model?

Publish–subscribe is a messaging pattern where senders of messages, called
publishers, do not program the messages to be sent directly to specific receivers,
called subscribers.
103. What is message queuing?
Message Queuing technology enables applications running at different times to
communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily
offline.
104. Define session.
A session is a series of operations involving the creation, production and
consumption of messages related to a logical task.
105. What are the parts of JMS message?
There are three parts: a header, a set of properties and the body of the message.
106. What is DSM?
This is an abstraction used for sharing data between computers that do not share
physical memory. Processes access DSM by reads and updates to what appears to be
ordinary memory within their address space.
107. Give the differences between message passing and DSM.

Message Passing Distributed Shared Memory

Services Offered:
Variables have to be marshalled The processes share variables directly, so
from one process, transmitted and no marshalling and unmarshalling. Shared
unmarshalled into other variables at the variables can be named, stored and accessed
receiving process. in DSM.
Processes can communicate with other Here, a process does not have private
processes. They can be protected from one address space. So one process can alter the
another by having private address spaces. execution of other.
This technique can be used in This cannot be used to heterogeneous
heterogeneous computers. computers.
Synchronization between processes is Synchronization is through locks and
through message passing primitives. semaphores.
Processes communicating via message Processes communicating through DSM
passing must execute at the same time. may execute with non-overlapping
lifetimes.
2.122 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem
Efficiency:
All remote data accesses are explicit and Any particular read or update may or may
therefore the programmer is always aware not involve communication by the
of whether a particular operation is in- underlying runtime support.
process or involves the expense of
communication.

108. Give the properties of tuple space.

 Space uncoupling: A tuple placed in tuple space may originate from any number
of sender processes and may be delivered to any one of a number of potential
recipients.
 Time uncoupling: A tuple placed in tuple space will remain in that tuple space
until removed and hence the sender and receiver do not need to overlap in time.

109. Give the differences between objects and distributed objects.

Objects Distributed Objects

Class is a fundamental concept in object- Classes are not prominent here.
oriented languages.
In the object oriented world, class can be Here the term „class‟ is avoided, more
the description of the behavior associated specific terms such as „factory‟ and
with a group of objects or, the place to go „template‟ are readily used.
to instantiate an object with a given
behavior or even the group of objects that
adhere
to that behavior.
Object oriented languages offer This offers interface inheritances.
implementation inheritances

110. Define software component.

A software component is a unit of composition with contractually specified interfaces
and explicit context dependencies only.

111. Give the advantages and disadvantages of CBT.

Advantages of CBT

 Independent extensions
 Distrubuted Systems 2.123

 Component Market
 Component models lessen unanticipated interactions between components
 Reduced time to market
 Reduced Costs

Disadvantages of CBT:
 Time to develop software components takes a big effort.

 Components can be pricey.

 Requirements in component technologies lacking
 Conflict between usability and reusability of components.
 Maintenance cost for components increased

112. What is EJB?

Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) is a specification of a server-side, managed component
architecture. It supports the development of the classic style of application, where
potentially large numbers of clients interact with a number of services realized
through components or configuration of components.

PART-B
1. Describe the physical system model.
2. Explain architectural models.
3. Write notes about architectural patterns.
4. Explain the middleware.
5. Describe the fundamental models.
6. Explain about interprocess communication.
7. Describe external data representation and marshaling.
8. Elucidate multicast communication.
9. Explain overlay networks.
10. Write notes on message passing interface.

11. Describe remote invocation.

12. Write in detail about Java RMI.
2.124 Communication in Distrubuted Sytem

13. Explain group communications.

14. Describe publish subscriber systems.
15. Write about message queues.
16. Explain shared memory approach.

17. Describe distributed objects.

18. How to convert from objects to components?

19. Write about EJB.