Introduction to Distributed Systems
Explore the fundamentals of distributed systems by understanding how machines communicate and cooperate reliably despite failures. Learn about the challenges of unreliable networks, system performance, and security considerations to build services that appear robust and seamless.
We'll cover the following...
Distributed systems have changed the face of the world. When your web browser connects to a web server somewhere else on the planet, it is participating in what seems to be a simple form of a client/server distributed system. When you contact a modern web service such as Google or Facebook, you are not just interacting with a single machine, however. Behind the scenes, these complex services are built from a large collection (i.e., thousands) of machines, each of which cooperate to provide the particular service of the site. Thus, it should be clear what makes studying distributed systems interesting. Indeed, it is worthy of an entire course; here, we just introduce a few of the major topics.