6.826 / Fall 2017

Homework: Reading questions

Submit two items to the submission website (see link in the navigation bar at the top of the page):

Submit your own question about the paper (e.g., what you find most confusing about the paper or the paper's general context/problem), before lecture (i.e., 1pm). You cannot use the question below. To the extent possible, during lecture we will try to answer questions submitted beforehand.

Submit your answer for the question below, before the beginning of the lecture.

Answer the following question:

If you have answered the second question already you are all set. If you haven't answered a question yet, answer the first one.

1. Using transactions it would be easy to implement exactly-once delivery of a message. Why do we need these tricky protocols and the careful analysis that they require?

2. Surprisingly the specification of reliable messages has a recovery action, even though reliable messages have no persistent state. Explain why the spec has this action nevertheless.