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Group communication support for distributed collaboration systems

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Abstract

The Collaborative Computing Transport Layer (CCTL) is a communication substrate consisting of a suite of group communication protocols. The design of CCTL supports the needs of distributed collaborative applications. CCTL is based on a two-level group hierarchy that naturally matches the structure of many collaborative applications and that allows several implementation optimizations. Logical interconnections among processes, called channels, define an efficient, light-weight group mechanism, providing a variety of communication services such as reliability and message ordering. Related channels are associated with a heavy-weight group, called a session, that provides group management services, such as membership, for its associated channels. Sessions and channels run different protocol stacks, allowing a flexible and useful separation of group management semantics and communication service quality. This also allows the efficient reuse of existing group management services when introducing new communication services.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, 27695-7534, USA

    Injong Rhee

  2. Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, 30322, USA

    Shun Yan Cheung, Phillip W. Hutto, Alan T. Krantz & Vaidy S. Sunderam

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  1. Injong Rhee
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  2. Shun Yan Cheung
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  3. Phillip W. Hutto
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  4. Alan T. Krantz
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  5. Vaidy S. Sunderam
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Rhee, I., Cheung, S.Y., Hutto, P.W. et al. Group communication support for distributed collaboration systems. Cluster Computing 2, 3–16 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1019014322302

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