Distributed Systems
A distributed system is a type of computer system where components located on different networked computers communicate and coordinate their actions by passing messages to achieve common goals. The components of these systems can be distributed across multiple machines, often over a wide geographical area, which allows for greater scalability, fault tolerance, and resource sharing.
History
The concept of distributed computing can be traced back to the early days of computing when researchers began to understand the limitations of centralized systems:
- In the late 1960s and early 1970s, projects like the ARPANET laid the groundwork for what would become the internet, which was inherently a distributed system.
- The term "distributed systems" was popularized in the 1980s with the advent of Local Area Networks (LANs) and the development of protocols like Ethernet.
- By the 1990s, with the growth of the Internet, distributed systems became more mainstream, leading to the development of technologies like CORBA, Java RMI, and DCOM.
Key Characteristics
Distributed systems exhibit several key characteristics:
- Concurrency: Multiple tasks or processes run simultaneously.
- Scalability: Systems can grow in size with little or no impact on performance.
- Fault Tolerance: The system can continue to operate despite failures of some of its components.
- Transparency: Users are unaware of the physical location of resources or the complexity of the system's operation.
- Resource Sharing: Hardware, software, or data can be shared among the users or components.
Challenges
Designing and implementing distributed systems face several challenges:
- Complexity: Coordinating multiple systems introduces complexity in synchronization, consistency, and communication.
- Partial Failure: Since components can fail independently, the system must handle partial failures gracefully.
- Network Latency: Communication over a network can introduce delays, affecting the performance of the system.
- Security: Distributed systems are more vulnerable to security threats due to their exposure over networks.
- Data Consistency: Maintaining consistent data across all nodes is challenging, often leading to the need for replication and consistency models like eventual consistency.
Modern Implementations
Modern distributed systems often leverage:
Sources
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