Techniques for Supporting Wide Area Distributed Applications

In this paper we present a number of techniques for supporting distributed applications that span many nodes across administrative boundaries in wide area internetworks. The techniques derive from experiences with research prototypes we have built in a variety of application areas. Several of the prototypes have achieved exceptionally far reaching distribution, operating in conjunction with machines in thousands of sites around the world. The techniques are applicable to a broad range of distributed applications. They concern problems with fault tolerance, administrative decentralization, scalability of operational semantics, organizing decentralized information, controlling the spread of distributed operations, and user interfaces.