The power of epidemics

Abstract

Building very large computing systems is extremely challenging, given the lack of robust scalable communication technologies. This threatens a new generation of mission-critical but very large computing systems. Fortunately, a new generation of "gossip-based" or epidemic communication primitives can overcome a number of these scalability problems, offering robustness and reliability even in the most demanding settings. Epidemic protocols emulate the spread of an infection in a crowded population, and are both reliable and stable under forms of stress that will disable most traditional protocols. This paper describes some of the common problems that arise in scalable group communication systems and how epidemic techniques have been used to successfully address these problems.