Distributed Systems

Distributed systems fundamentals, middleware, transparency, openness and scalability.

Architectural styles including layered, object-based, REST and publish-subscribe systems.

Processes, threads, context switching, server models and virtualization.

Networking layers, TCP/UDP, middleware communication and synchronous/asynchronous messaging.

Identifiers, location-independent naming, forwarding pointers, Chord and hierarchical location services.

Physical clocks, NTP, clock drift, happened-before and logical clocks.

Sequential and causal consistency, client-centric consistency and replica trade-offs.

Dependability, reliability, availability, failure models and redundancy.