Selective Order-Preserving Broadcast Protocol for Distributed Systems

This paper discusses how to provide selective group communication for multiple entities in a distributed system by using less-reliable broadcast communication services. In the group communication, a protocol data unit (PDU) sent by each entity has to be delivered atomically to all the destinations in the group. In distributed applications, each entity sends a PDU only to a subset rather than all the entities, and each entity receives only PDUs destined to it from every entity in the same order as they are sent. We name such a broadcast service a selective order-preserving broadcast (SP) service. In this paper, we discuss how to design a distributed protocol which provides the SP service for entities by using the less-reliable broadcast network in the presence of PDU loss. The SP service can be a useful facility for designing and implementing distributed systems like groupware.