A distributed system is comprised of multiple computing devices interconnected with one another via a loosely-connected network. Almost all computing systems and applications today are distributed in nature for a variety of reasons, including resource sharing, fault tolerance, performance, security and the geographical nature of the requirements. This course provides an in-depth coverage of the underlying principles and practices involved in the design, implementation and evaluation of a distributed system. The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will focus on the foundations of distributed system design, and the second part will focus on the current,state-of-the-art distributed systems technologies, including Internet-based services as well as distributed services built using small, mobile computing devices.

Introduction Theoretical Aspects Logical clocks Vector clocks Global state Communication Models Client server Peer-to-peer Communication Paradigms Asynchronous message passing Synchronous message passing Remote procedure call Remote object invocation Rendezvous Naming Naming entities Locating mobile entities Unreferenced entities Current Topics: tbd.

CSCI 5573 (Advanced Operating Systems) or a course in computer networks.