From Epidemics to Distributed Computing

Abstract

Abstract — Epidemic algorithms have been recently recognized as robust and scalable means to disseminate information in large-scale settings. Information is disseminated reliably in a distributed system the same way an epidemic would be propagated throughout a group of individuals: each process of the system chooses random peers to whom it relays the information it has received. The underlying peer-to-peer communication paradigm is the key to the scalability of the dissemination scheme. Epidemic algorithms have been studied theoretically and their analysis is built on sound mathematical foundations. Although promising, their general applicability to large scale distributed systems has yet to go through addressing many issues. These constitute an exciting research agenda. Index Terms — Scalability, peer-to-peer, epidemics, information