Efficient Dissemination of Information in Computer Networks

Many distributed applications require that information be propagated in the system efficiently. Propagation of information, as soon as it becomes known, via direct messages, is prohibitively expensive even in relatively small networks. Fortunately, in many applications, one can use lazy propagation of information, where each site eventually obtains all the information in the network. A common method for spreading information is by exchanging information logs amongst sites in the network. Several mechanisms for log propagation have already been proposed. All these mechanisms require that information log must be accompanied with temporal information, which is the state of the site sending the message, when the message is sent. In this paper, we eliminate the need for sending the log and temporal components together. We demonstrate that the separation of these two components leads to a more efficient and flexible solution of the log propagation problem. Also, our solution is more scalable, which makes it more suitable for large and geographically dispersed networks.