The Failure Detector Abstraction

Freiling F, Kuznetsov P, Guerraoui R (2011)

Publication Type: Journal article, Original article

Publication year: 2011

Journal

ACM Computing Surveys Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Publisher: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)

Book Volume: 43

Pages Range: 1-9

Journal Issue: 2

DOI: 10.1145/1883612.1883616

Abstract

A failure detector is a fundamental abstraction in distributed computing. This article surveys this abstraction through two dimensions. First we study failure detectors as building blocks to simplify the design of reliable distributed algorithms. In particular, we illustrate how failure detectors can factor out timing assumptions to detect failures in distributed agreement algorithms. Second, we study failure detectors as computability benchmarks. That is, we survey the weakest failure detector question and illustrate how failure detectors can be used to classify problems. We also highlight some limitations of the failure detector abstraction along each of the dimensions. © 2011 ACM.

Authors with CRIS profile

Felix Freiling Lehrstuhl für Informatik 1 (IT-Sicherheitsinfrastrukturen)

Involved external institutions

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) CH Switzerland (CH)

How to cite

APA:

Freiling, F., Kuznetsov, P., & Guerraoui, R. (2011). The Failure Detector Abstraction. ACM Computing Surveys, 43(2), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/1883612.1883616

MLA:

Freiling, Felix, Petr Kuznetsov, and Rachid Guerraoui. "The Failure Detector Abstraction." ACM Computing Surveys 43.2 (2011): 1-9.

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