Understanding the Limitations of Causally and Totally Ordered Communication

Causally and totally ordered communication support (CATOCS) has been proposed as important to provide as part of the basic building blocks for constructing reliable distributed systems. In this paper, we identify four major limitations to CATOCS, investigate the applicability of CATOCS to several classes of distributed applications in light of these limitations, and the potential impact of these facilities on communication scalability and robustness. From this investigation, we find limited merit and several potential problems in using CATOCS. The fundamental difficulty with the CATOCS is that it attempts to solve state problems at the communication level in violation of the well-known “end-to-end” argument.

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1993
• Where: SOSP
• Authors: David R. Cheriton, Dale Skeen
• Keywords: Basic Building Blocks, Operating System, Reliable Distributed Systems, SOSP 1993, Totally Ordered