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Slow Receivers in a Distributed Management System

Slow receivers explained

A slow receiver is a node in a distributed system that can't process incoming messages due to network bandwidth issues, CPU issues, I/O issues or a combination of these factors. In all cases, the slow receiver either fails to pick up data from its incoming network buffers, causing the system to bottleneck, or fails to send application- or protocol-level acknowledgements that would let the sender proceed.

Slow receivers represent a performance problem in a distributed system. When using TCP or multicast, the presence of a slow receiver causes other members of the distributed system to slow down, and in extreme cases brings system throughput to a complete stand still.

More Stories By Sudhir Menon

Sudhir Menon is the director of engineering for GemStone Systems and works closely with various development teams (both onsite and offshore) working on the Gemfire Enterprise Data Fabric. With over 17 years of cutting-edge software experience with marquee firms like Gemstone, Intel, EDS and CenterSpan communications, he is one of the key architects for the Gemfire Enterprise Data Fabric. His expertise in distributed data management spans multiple languages (Java, C++ and .NET) and multiple platforms and he has architected and developed network stacks for the last 10+ years.

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