2.13.5 Multicast and Process Groups

A Process Group: a collection of processes that co-operate towards a common goal.

Multicast communication: One message is sent to the members of a process group

Idea: Instead of knowing address of process, just need to know an address representing the service. Lower levels take care of routing messages.

Useful for:

Replicated Services

One update message goes to all replicas, which perform identical operations. Reduces communication costs.

Locating objects in distributed services

Request for object goes to all processes implementing service, but only process holding object replies.