Guest editorial: special issue on reliable distributed systems

Abstract

ESIGNERS of distributed systems are concerned with developing architectures, networking, software, algorithms, and applications. While research in this direction addresses some of the fundamental issues in distributed computing, topics related to modeling and simulation of multiple processor systems, real-time operation, reliability, fault tolerance, information assurance, performance measurements, and evaluation are also critical for the successful functioning of distributed systems. The purpose of this special issue is to serve researchers, designers, and implementers of distributed systems, with emphasis on system properties such as reliability, availability, and performability. In addition to conceptual advancement, this issue is intended to recognize the efforts that are aimed toward experimentation, testbeds, development, exploratory or emerging applications, and measurements from operational systems. The theme of this special issue was made to coincide with the 19th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems held at Nuernberg, Germany, 2000, but the topics and submissions were not restricted to the proceedings of this symposium. We received a total of 55 submissions, of which we selected 11 regular papers. Every submission was sent to at least five referees. We received a total of 201 reviews back from 141 referees. Several papers that are not included in this special issue have been forwarded for consideration in the regular issues of this transaction. Although we wanted to have a good mix of current, successful efforts, innovative ideas on reliable designs and open problems—both conceptual and experimental, the space limitation in the special issue and the type of submissions we received may have precluded some key topics of reliable distributed systems. Yet, we believe that the special issue encompasses major properties of a reliable distributed system. The selected papers are classified into four groups: