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From: jack@cwi.nl (Jack Jansen)
Newsgroups: comp.os.research
Subject: Re: How do you tell if a remote site is alive?
Message-ID: <3337@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU>
Date: Wed, 17-Jun-87 05:00:44 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdcsvax.3337
Posted: Wed Jun 17 05:00:44 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 21-Jun-87 14:24:06 EDT
Sender: darrell@sdcsvax.UCSD.EDU
Organization: AMOEBA project, CWI, Amsterdam
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Approved: mod-os@sdcsvax.uucp


I might misunderstand the whole matter, but as far as I know there is
no way to distinguish between a network partitioning and a crashed
host, is there?

Maybe you could come up with some scheme where the host that was cut off from
the main network would die voluntarily, but I'm not sure wether this would
do you any good. Moreover, if the network is partitioned into two parts
with an equal number of hosts, you don't wat to bring the whole
network down, I guess.

Also, usually you are interested in *when* the host crashed, i.e. what it
got done before crashing. Your application will have to find that out anyway,
so why not just assume that it did crash as soon as you have that suspicion?

-- 
	Jack Jansen, jack@cwi.nl (or jack@mcvax.uucp)
	The shell is my oyster.