Slides for Chapter 1

Characterization of Distributed Systems

From Coulouris, Dollimore, Kindberg and Blair

Distributed Systems:
Concepts and Design
Edition 5, © Addison-Wesley 2015
 Distributed Systems (Introduction)

Definition: A distributed system is one in which components

(software/hardware) located at networked computers communicate
and coordinate their actions only by-passing messages. [Coulouris]
Definition: It is a collection of autonomous computers linked by a
computer networks and equipped with distributed systems software
(middleware).
Definition: A distributed system is a collection of independent
computers that appear to the users of the system as a single
computer. [Andrew Tanenbaum]
Definition: A distributed system is several computers doing
something together. Thus, a distributed system has three primary
characteristics: multiple computers, interconnections, and shared
state. [Michael Schroeder]
Distributed Systems (Introduction)

•e.g., the Internet and the associated World Wide Web, web
search, online gaming, financial trading systems, email,
social networks, eCommerce, etc.
•The sharing of resources is a main motivation for
constructing D.S. Resources may be managed by servers &
accessed by clients or they may be encapsulated as objects
and accessed by other client objects.
Distributed Systems (Introduction)

• The challenges arising from the construction of

distributed systems are the heterogeneity (variety &
differences) of their components, openness (which
allows components to be added or replaced), security,
scalability – the ability to work well when the load or the
number of users increases – failure handling,
concurrency of components, transparency and providing
quality of service.
Heterogeneity – networks, computer hardware, OS, PL,
implementations by different developers
Fig. 1.1 (see book for the full text) Uses of Distributed Systems Technology:
Selected application domains and associated networked applications

Finance and commerce eCommerce e.g. Amazon and eBay, PayPal,

online banking and trading
The information society Web information and search engines, ebooks,
Wikipedia; social networking: Facebook and MySpace .
Creative industries and online gaming, music and film in the home, user-
entertainment generated content, e.g. YouTube, Flickr
Healthcare health informatics, on online patient records,
monitoring patients
Education e-learning, virtual learning environments;
distance learning
Transport and logistics GPS in route finding systems, map services:
Google Maps, Google Earth
Science The Grid as an enabling technology for
collaboration between scientists
Environmental management sensor technology to monitor earthquakes,
floods or tsunamis
Distributed Systems - Challenges

Heterogeneity: Heterogeneity (that is, variety and

difference) applies to all of the following:
• networks
• computer hardware
• operating systems
• programming languages
• implementations by different developers
Distributed Systems - Challenges

Openness: that determines whether the system can be

extended and reimplemented in various ways
•new resource-sharing services can be added and be made
available for use by a variety of client programs
•needs specification and documentation of the key software
interfaces of the components of a system are made available
to software developers
•a uniform communication mechanism and published
interfaces for access to shared resources.
Distributed Systems - Challenges

Security: Security for information resources has three

components: confidentiality (protection against disclosure to
unauthorized individuals), integrity (protection against
alteration or corruption), and availability (protection against
interference with the means to access the resources - fairness).
•Denial of service attacks: Another security problem is that a user may
wish to disrupt a service for some reason. A large number of pointless
requests that the serious users are unable to use it
•Security of mobile code: Mobile code needs to be handled with care.
An executable program as email attachment - the possible effects of
running the program are unpredictable, it may seem to display an
interesting picture but in reality it may access local resources
Distributed Systems - Challenges

Scalability: A system is described as scalable if it will

remain effective when there is a significant increase in the
number of resources and the number of users. The number
of computers and servers in the Internet has increased
dramatically.
•Controlling the cost of physical resources
•Controlling the performance loss
•Preventing software resources running out: An example of
lack of scalability is shown by the numbers used as Internet
(IP) addresses (32bit to 128bit)
Figure 1.6: Growth of the Internet (computers and web servers)

Date Computers Web servers Percentage

1993, July 1,776,000 130 0.008

1995, July 6,642,000 23,500 0.4
1997, July 19,540,000 1,203,096 6
1999, July 56,218,000 6,598,697 12
2001, July 125,888,197 31,299,592 25
2003, July ~200,000,000 42,298,371 21
2005, July 353,284,187 67,571,581 19
 Which
Which isis aa Distributed
Distributed System
System –– (A)
(A) or
or (B)?
(B)?

(A)

(A) Facebook Social Network Graph among humans

Source: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=469716398919
(B)

(B) The Internet (Internet Mapping Project, color coded by ISPs)

Distributed System Example – Web domains

What are the “entities”

(nodes)?

What is the
communication medium
(links)?

Source: http://www.vlib.us/web/worldwideweb3d.html
Distributed System Example – A Datacenter
 Distributed Systems - Challenges
Failure Handling: Computer systems sometimes fail. When faults occur
in hardware or software, programs may produce incorrect results or may
stop before they have completed the intended computation.
•Detecting failures: Some failures can be detected. For example, checksums can
be used to detect corrupted data in a message or a file
•Masking failures: i) Messages can be retransmitted when they fail to arrive, ii)
File data can be written to a pair of disks so that if one is corrupted, the other may
still be correct
•Recovery from failures: Recovery involves the design of software so that the state
of permanent data can be recovered or ‘rolled back’ after a server has crashed
•Redundancy: Services can be made to tolerate failures by the use of redundant
components; i) Two different routes between any two routers in the Internet; ii)
In the DNS, every name table is replicated in at least two different servers; iii) A
database may be replicated in several servers to ensure that the data remains
accessible after the failure of any single server
 Distributed Systems - Challenges

Concurrency: Both services and applications provide resources that can

be shared by clients in a distributed system. The services and applications
generally allow multiple client requests to be processed concurrently.
There is therefore a possibility that several clients will attempt to access a
shared resource at the same time.
For an object to be safe in a concurrent environment, its operations must be
synchronized in such a way that its data remains consistent. Therefore,
concurrency is another challenges, however, it is useful in multicore,
multiprocessor and distributed computer systems:
• Increased performance from true parallelism
• Increased reliability (fault tolerance)
• Specialized processors (graphics, communication, encryption ...)
• Some applications, like email, are inherently distributed
 Distributed Systems - Challenges

Transparency:
•It means that any form of distributed system should hide its
distributed nature from its users, appearing and functioning as a
normal centralized system.
•Transparency is defined as the concealment (hiding) from the user
and the application programmer of the separation of components in
a distributed system, so that the system is perceived as a whole
rather than as a collection of independent components.
•The two most important transparencies are access and location
transparency; their presence or absence most strongly affects the
utilization of distributed resources.
 Distributed Systems - Challenges

Access transparency: enables local & remote resources to be accessed using identical
operations (GUI with folders, which is same whether the files inside the folder are local or remote)
Location transparency: enables resources to be accessed without knowledge of their
physical or network location (for example, which building or IP address).
Concurrency transparency: enables several processes to operate concurrently using
shared resources without interference between them.
Replication transparency: enables multiple instances of resources to be used to increase
reliability and performance without knowledge of the replicas by users or application
programmers.
Failure transparency: enables the concealment of faults, allowing users and application
programs to complete their tasks despite the failure of hardware or software components.
Mobility transparency: allows the movement of resources and clients within a system
without affecting the operation of users or programs.
Performance transparency: allows the system to be reconfigured to improve
performance as loads vary.
Scaling transparency: allows the system and applications to expand in scale without
change to the system structure or the application algorithms.
Distributed Systems (Examples & Trends)

We now look at more specific examples of distributed systems to

further illustrate the diversity and indeed complexity of distributed
systems provision today:

•Web Search
•Pervasive networking and the modern Internet
•Mobile and ubiquitous computing
•Massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)
•Financial Trading
Distributed Systems (Examples)

Web Search: has emerged as a major growth industry in the last

decade and global number of searches has risen to over 10 billion per
calendar month
•task of a web search engine is to index the entire contents of the
World Wide Web, web pages, multimedia sources, books etc
•Google, the market leader in web search technology has put
significant effort into the design of a sophisticated distributed system
infrastructure to support search (and Google Earth)
•very large numbers of networked computers located at data centres
all around the world
•very large parallel and distributed computations/storage system that
offers fast access to very large datasets
Distributed System Example – A Datacenter
 Distributed Systems (Examples)

Pervasive networking and the modern Internet

•The modern Internet is a vast interconnected collection of computer
networks of many different types - WiFi, WiMAX, Bluetooth and 3G/4G
mobile phone networks.
•Programs running on the Computers connected to it interact by passing
messages, employing a common means of communication.
•Internet enables users, wherever they are, to make use of services such as
the www, email and file transfer.
•Intranets – subnetworks operated by companies and other organizations
and typically protected by firewalls (preventing unauthorized messages
from leaving or entering).
•The intranets are linked together by backbones. A backbone is a network
link with a high transmission capacity, employing satellite connections,
fibre optic cables and other high-bandwidth circuits.
Figure 1.3: A typical portion of the Internet

intranet ☎
☎
☎ ISP

backbone

satellite link

desktop computer:
server:
network link:
 An
AnIntranet
Intranetand
andaadistributed
distributedsystem
systemover
overitit

email server Desktop

computers
print and other servers

Running over this

Intranet is a Local area
distributed file system Web server network
•What are the “entities
”
(nodes) in it?
email server
•What is the print
communication File server
medium?
other servers
Police, military and
other security and law of
the rest
enforcement agencies
the Internet
router/firewall

prevents unauthorized messages from leaving/entering;

implemented by filtering incoming and outgoing messages
Lecture
Lecture1-27
1-27
 Distributed Systems (Examples)

Mobile and ubiquitous computing: Ubiquitous computing -

connecting the many small, cheap computational devices that are present
in users’ physical environments, including the home, office etc. a concept
where computing is made to appear anytime & everywhere, in contrast to
desktop computing it can occur using any device/any location/any format.
•Laptop computers, Handheld devices - including mobile phones, smart
phones, GPS-enabled devices, pagers, personal digital assistants (PDAs),
video/digital cameras & smart watches.
•Devices embedded in appliances such
as washing machines, hi-fi systems,
cars and refrigerators
 Figure 1.4: Portable and handheld devices in a distributed system

User visiting a host organization - user’s home intranet and

the host intranet at the site that the user
is visiting. Both intranets are connected to the rest of the Internet.
access to three forms of wireless connection
 Distributed
Distributed Systems
Systems are
are layered
layered over
over
networks
networks
Application Underlying
Application layer protocol transport protocol

e-mail smtp [RFC 821] TCP

remote terminal access telnet [RFC 854] TCP
Web http [RFC 2068] TCP
file transfer ftp [RFC 959] TCP
streaming multimedia proprietary TCP or UDP
(e.g. RealNetworks)
remote file server NFS-network file system TCP or UDP
Internet telephony proprietary typically UDP
(e.g., Skype)

TCP=Transmission Control Protocol

UDP=User Datagram Protocol

Distributed System Protocols!

e.g. SMTP- Simple Mail Transfer Protocol Networking Protocols Lecture
Lecture1-31
1-31
 The
The Secret
Secret of
of the
theWorld
WorldWide
WideWeb:
Web:
the
the HTTP
HTTPStandard
Standard
h tt
pr
equ
HTTP: hypertext transfer PC running ht t es t
pr
protocol Explorer e sp
ons
e
• WWW’s application layer
protocol
• e st
client/server model u
r eq Server
– client: browser that requests, Mac running t tp o n se
receives, and “displays” Safari
h
r esp Running
tp Apache
WWW objects ht
Web
– server: WWW server, which is
server
storing the website, sends
objects in response to
requests
• http1.0: RFC 1945
• http1.1: RFC 2068
– Leverages same connection to
download images, scripts, etc.

Lecture
Lecture1-32
1-32
The
The HTTP
HTTPProtocol:
Protocol: More
More

http: TCP transport http is “stateless”

service: • server maintains no
• client initiates a TCP information about
connection (creates socket) past client requests
to server, port 80 Why?
• server accepts the TCP Protocols that maintain session
connection from client “state” are complex!
• http messages (application- • past history (state) must be
layer protocol messages) maintained and updated.
exchanged between • if server/client crashes, their
browser (http client) and views of “state” may be
WWW server (http server) inconsistent, and hence must
• TCP connection closed be reconciled.
• RESTful protocols are
stateless.
Lecture
Lecture1-33
1-33
 HTTP
HTTPExample
Example
Suppose user enters URL www.cs.uiuc.edu/
(contains text,
references to 10
jpeg images)
1a. http client initiates a TCP 1b. http server at host
connection to http server
www.cs.uiuc.edu waiting for a
(process) at www.cs.uiuc.edu.
TCP connection at port 80.
Port 80 is default for http server.
“accepts” connection, notifying
client

2. http client sends a http request

message (containing URL) into
TCP connection socket
3. http server receives request
messages, forms a response
message containing requested
object (index.html), sends
message into socket

time
Lecture
Lecture1-34
1-34
 HTTP
HTTPExample
Example (cont.)
(cont.)
4. http server closes the TCP
connection (if necessary).
5. http client receives a response
message containing html file,
displays html, Parses html
file, finds 10 referenced jpeg
objects
6. Steps 1-5 are then repeated for
each of 10 jpeg objects

time

For fetching referenced objects, have 2 options:

• non-persistent connection: only one object fetched per TCP
connection
– some browsers create multiple TCP connections simultaneously - one
per object
• persistent connection: multiple objects transferred within one TCP
connection

Lecture
Lecture1-35
1-35
Distributed computing as a utility – Cloud Computing

The term cloud computing is used to capture this vision of computing

as a utility. A cloud is defined as a set of Internet-based application,
storage and computing services sufficient to support most users’
needs, thus enabling them to largely or totally distribute with local
data storage and application software.
What is cloud computing, in simple terms?

• Cloud computing is the delivery of on-demand computing services --

from applications to storage and processing power -- typically over the
internet and on a pay-as-you-go basis
• Rather than owning their own computing infrastructure or data centers,
companies can rent access to anything from applications to storage from
a cloud service provider
• One benefit of using cloud computing services is that firms can avoid the
upfront cost and complexity of owning and maintaining their own IT
infrastructure, and instead simply pay for what they use, when they use it
• In turn, providers of cloud computing services can benefit from
significant economies of scale by delivering the same services to a wide
range of customers, which includes consumer services like Gmail or the
cloud back-up of the photos on your smartphone
 Services Models – Cloud Computing

SaaS is a way in which a software is carried as on

demand application over Internet. Instead of
installing it on the computer it can be accessed and
utilized over Internet makes us free from Complex
software
PaaS provides an environment for development as a
service & used by users to run and deploy
application. Different providers make their own tools
which are used by other users to develop their own
program. These programs are provided to the users
through internet
IaaS provides infrastructure which is used by client
(it can be storage, Network and firewalls). IaaS
provides multiple resources like load balancer,
virtual Local area network, IP address and software
 Figure 7: Web servers and web browsers

Web servers Browsers

http://www.google.comlsearch?q=obama
www.google.com

www.cdk5.net Internet
http://www.cdk5.net/

www.w3c.org

File system of http://www.w3.org/standards/faq.html#conformance

www.w3c.org standards

faq.html