A progress report on the Desperanto research project

Abstract

The Desperanto research project has been investigating topics in the area of distributed computing systems since the Fall of 1980. The project addresses problems that arise in the design and implementation of software support for general-purpose resource sharing in networks consisting of heterogeneous nodes. Thus it is most closely related to the prototype RSEXEC system [19], the National Software Works project [2], Rochester's Intelligent Gateway [8] and the Livermore Network Communications system [21]. It is influenced less directly by other contemporary systems which address distributed computing and operating system issues in different contexts such as special-purpose distributed applications, homogeneous architectures or shared memory environments [1] [3] [4] [6] [7] [16] [17] [18] [23].Some results have been published to date [9] [10] [11] [12], and other results are currently in the review process [13]. Although it is still premature to publish the details of the solutions to the design problems in journal (or archival) form, this report has been prepared to describe design issues and progress made to date. This is intended as an informal status report for a wide readership.