Group communication in real-time computing systems: issues and directions

Group communication in real-time computing systems has been a subject of research for almost two decades but it is not yet a mature technological field. The purpose of this paper is to review the main goals of developing group communication protocols and establish a practical framework of protocols toward meeting the goals. As a part of this, an attempt is made to clarify the relationship between group communication protocols and fault tolerance. Remaining major research issues and promising directions for solution search are also discussed.