Evaluation of bus and ring communication topologies for the DELTA-4 distributed fault-tolerant architecture

Karama Kanoun (1) , David Powell (1)

1 LAAS-TSF - Équipe Tolérance aux fautes et Sûreté de Fonctionnement informatique

The Delta-4 distributed fault-tolerant architecture aims to provide dependability in locally-distributed systems that are open to heterogeneity and off-the-shelf hardware. Reliability and availability are provided by means of replicating computation across distinct nodes interconnected by a local area network. The achievable dependability is therefore limited by that of the underlying communication system. This paper reports a study of the dependability of the various communication topologies that can be used in order to construct a Delta-4 system. Single and dual bus and ring configurations are possible (based on 802.4, 802.5 and FDDI standards); the paper gives closed-form expressions for the reliability and availability of each topology when repair is taken into account. It is shown that the dimensioning parameter in the dependability of the communication system is the coverage of the self-checking mechanisms built into the network attachment controllers.

Mots clés: Fault tolerant systems; Topology; Computer architecture; Fault tolerance; Hardware; Availability; Telecommunication network reliability; Computer networks; LAN interconnection; Local area networks

Domaines: Modélisation et simulation

Karama Kanoun, David Powell. Evaluation of bus and ring communication topologies for the DELTA-4 distributed fault-tolerant architecture. 10th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems, IEEE, Sep 1991, Pise, Italy. ⟨10.1109/RELDIS.1991.145415⟩. ⟨hal-01986395⟩