EpTO: An Epidemic Total Order Algorithm for Large-Scale Distributed Systems
-----------------------------------
          
This seminar is part of the "EBSIS - Event Based Systems in Iasi" Twinning project. This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 692178.
-----------------------------------
          
ABSTRACT
-----------------------------------
The ordering of events is a fundamental problem of distributed 
computing and has been extensively studied over several 
decades. From all the available orderings, total ordering is 
of particular interest as it provides a powerful abstraction for 
building reliable distributed applications. Unfortunately, 
deterministic total order algorithms scale poorly and are 
therefore unfit for modern large-scale applications. 
The main contribution presented in this talk is EpTO, a 
total order algorithm with probabilistic agreement that 
scales both in the number of processes and events. 
EpTO provides deterministic safety and probabilistic 
liveness: integrity, total order and validity are always 
preserved, while agreement is achieved with arbitrarily 
high probability. We show that EpTO is well-suited for 
large-scale dynamic distributed systems: it does not require 
a global clock nor synchronized processes, and it is highly 
robust even when the network suffers from large delays 
and significant churn and message loss.
          
SPEAKER(S)
-----------------------------------
Hugues MERCIER, PhD
University of Neuchatel
Elvetia
-----------------------------------
Hugues Mercier received the Ph.D. degree in 
electrical and computer engineering from the 
University of British Columbia in 2008. 
From 2008 to 2011, he was a postdoctoral research fellow 
at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, 
and at McGill University. 
Currently, he is a researcher at the Universite de 
Neuchatel in Switzerland. 
His current interests are the applications of coding theory,
information theory, and algorithms to the study of 
communication networks. With a background in Mathematics, 
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, he enjoys 
solving applied problems supported by theoretical 
results allowing a better understanding of the behavior 
and limits of communication systems.
-----------------------------------