"Grapevine: An Exercise in Distributed Computing" Andrew D. Birrell, Roy Levin, Roger M. Needham, and Michael D. Schroeder Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
other distributed activities in 1978-80 • Authors: Andrew D. Birrell, Roy Levin, Roger M. Needham, and Michael D. Schroeder • Authors’ institutions: Xerox Palo Alto Research Center • Appear in: Communications of ACM 2
“Grapevine makes its services available to many different clients. Thus, it should make no assumptions about message content. Also, the integrity of these services should not in any way depend on correctness of the clients. Though the use of an unsatisfactory client program will affect the service given to its user, it should not affect the service given to others.” 3
– Client correctness • Message delivery guarantee – If accepted, message would be delivered to recipient’s inbox – or … returned with error • Failure of server ≠ unavailability of service • Decentralized administration 5
entry – Individual – Group • Group entry – value = list of RNames — i.e., the group members – May be distribution list, resource list, access control list, etc. • Individual entry – value = [authenticator, ordered inbox list, contact site, …] – May be human users, servers, etc. 8
– Organizational, geographic, or other convenient partition • RName – two-part name Name.R – R is a registry – Name is a unique name within that particular registry – (Easily expandable to three part names or more) 9
Independent of each other ◦ Communicate only by internet protocols • Registration server ◦ Contains replicas of one or more Registries ◦ Can accept change request for any of its registries ◦ Propagates changes to other replicas of Registry • Message server ◦ Accepts any message for delivery ◦ Stores inboxes for some individuals ◦ (Individuals typically have more than one inbox) 12
E-mail clients ◦ Other kinds of distributed applications • Handles all naming and addressing issues ◦ Clients never need to know name or address of any Grapevine server ◦ Servers optimized based on “User Package” 13
destination list • Find inbox server contact for each recipient • Sort by server, transmit one copy to each server with list of recipient names • Duplicate elimination done at receiving server ◦ E.g., an individual a member of more than one group • Queue if all servers down or inaccessible • Receiving client polls all its inboxes ◦ Downloads from each ◦ Message deleted from inbox only after receipt is acknowledged 16
servers • Groups in gv ◦ Names of registries ◦ Members are RNames of registration servers holding replicas of the group registry • I.e., ◦ reg is a Registry iff there is a group reg.gv ◦ Server holds a replica of reg iff its name is in reg.gv 18
registry ◦ Its members are RNames of all registration servers • Adding a registration server adding a member to gv.gv • Adding a new registry r adding a new group entry r.gv to gv registry ◦ Members of r.gv are a subset of gv.gv 19
is a group in the database ▪ Members are RNames of servers ◦ Servers are individuals in the database ▪ Contact site is internet address of server • To find foo.bar 1. Contact local Grapevine server, ask for bar.gv 2. Enumerate members, contact one of them, and ask for foo.bar 20
(e.g., DNS) for GrapevineRServer ◦ Returns a list of addresses ◦ List changes very infrequently or • Broadcast to well-known socket on LAN ◦ Local Grapevine servers listen on socket ◦ Usually quicker 21
Servers ◦ Anything else you want them to be • Registry maps names to … ◦ Groups (i.e., a list of other names) ◦ Individuals (something with an address and/or other properties) 22