Reliable Distributed Algorithms, Part 1

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This course is the first course in a series of two. Both courses provide a solid foundation in the area of reliable distributed computing, including the main concepts, results, models and algorithms in the field.

Today's global IT infrastructures are distributed systems; from the Internet to the data-centers of cloud computing that fuel the current revolution of global IT services. At the core of these services you find distributed algorithms.

These algorithms run on multiple computers and communicate only by sending and receiving messages. It is crucial for the implemented services to continue to work 24/7 even if some of the computers fail or some of the messages are lost in transit. This is the subject of reliable distributed algorithms in computer science.

ID2203.1x covers models of distributed algorithms based on input/output automata; specifications of fault tolerant abstractions and failure detectors; specific distributed abstractions and fault-tolerant algorithms, including reliable broadcast and causal broadcast; key-value stores and consistency models; single-value consensus and the Paxos algorithm.

To complete the course with a full grade (100%) students are required to answer the graded quizzes provided every week, as well as the programming assignments.