A distributed computing environment (DCE) based object request broker

Includes bibliographical references.Object oriented technology has moved beyond being a tool for design and programming and is now being used to implement enterprise wide computer systems. Also, there has been a move from centralised mainframe systems to distributed computing due to the advent of more powerful workstations and faster, more reliable networks. The integration of object oriented technology and distributed computing is becoming a generally accepted method for implementing networked computer solutions. The purpose of the research presented in this thesis is to investigate how the evolving object oriented technologies can build upon the current distributed computing technology by using there underlying infrastructure and then to implement a CORBA compliant distributed Object Request Broker. This involves the design and implementation of a compiler which maps CORBA objects to DCE remote procedure calls. Our objective is to investigate the operation of a distributed object implementation and in particular the performance which can be achieved by a DCE-based Object Request Broker which is CORBA compliant

An approach to rollback recovery of collaborating mobile agents

Fault-tolerance is one of the main problems that must be resolved to improve the adoption of the agents' computing paradigm. In this paper, we analyse the execution model of agent platforms and the significance of the faults affecting their constituent components on the reliable execution of agent-based applications, in order to develop a pragmatic framework for agent systems fault-tolerance. The developed framework deploys a communication-pairs independent check pointing strategy to offer a low-cost, application-transparent model for reliable agent- based computing that covers all possible faults that might invalidate reliable agent execution, migration and communication and maintains the exactly-one execution property

The Raincore API for clusters of networking elements

Clustering technology offers a way to increase overall reliability and performance of Internet information flow by strengthening one link in the chain without adding others. We have implemented this technology in a distributed computing architecture for network elements. The architecture, called Raincore, originated in the Reliable Array of Independent Nodes, or RAIN, research collaboration between the California Institute of Technology and the US National Aeronautics and Space Agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The RAIN project focused on developing high-performance, fault-tolerant, portable clustering technology for spaceborne computing . The technology that emerged from this project became the basis for a spinoff company, Rainfinity, which has the exclusive intellectual property rights to the RAIN technology. The authors describe the Raincore conceptual architecture and distributed services, which are designed to make it easy for developers to port their applications to run on top of a cluster of networking elements. We include two applications: a Web server prototype that was part of the original RAIN research project and a commercial firewall cluster product from Rainfinity

Distributed simulation and the grid: Position statements

The Grid provides a new and unrivaled technology for large scale distributed simulation as it enables collaboration and the use of distributed computing resources. This panel paper presents the views of four researchers in the area of Distributed Simulation and the Grid. Together we try to identify the main research issues involved in applying Grid technology to distributed simulation and the key future challenges that need to be solved to achieve this goal. Such challenges include not only technical challenges, but also political ones such as management methodology for the Grid and the development of standards. The benefits of the Grid to end-user simulation modelers also are discussed

Improving the Scalability of DPWS-Based Networked Infrastructures

The Devices Profile for Web Services (DPWS) specification enables seamless discovery, configuration, and interoperability of networked devices in various settings, ranging from home automation and multimedia to manufacturing equipment and data centers. Unfortunately, the sheer simplicity of event notification mechanisms that makes it fit for resource-constrained devices, makes it hard to scale to large infrastructures with more stringent dependability requirements, ironically, where self-configuration would be most useful. In this report, we address this challenge with a proposal to integrate gossip-based dissemination in DPWS, thus maintaining compatibility with original assumptions of the specification, and avoiding a centralized configuration server or custom black-box middleware components. In detail, we show how our approach provides an evolutionary and non-intrusive solution to the scalability limitations of DPWS and experimentally evaluate it with an implementation based on the the Web Services for Devices (WS4D) Java Multi Edition DPWS Stack (JMEDS).Comment: 28 pages, Technical Repor