Questions and Answers
What is the primary purpose of a naming system in a distributed system?
What is an entity in a distributed system?
What is a name in a distributed system?
Why is the implementation of a naming system often distributed in a distributed system?
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What are the main issues in designing a naming system in a distributed system?
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What is the primary purpose of separating the name of an entity and its address?
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What is the characteristic of an identifier in a distributed system?
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What is a directory node in a naming graph?
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What is a path name in a naming graph?
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What is an absolute path name in a naming graph?
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Study Notes
Naming in Distributed Systems
- Names play an important role in distributed systems, enabling the sharing of resources, unique identification of entities, and reference to locations.
- A naming system is necessary to resolve names to the entities they refer to, and its implementation is often distributed in nature.
Entities and Naming
- An entity in a distributed system is anything that can be operated on, such as resources (hosts, printers, disks, files, objects, processes, users, etc.).
- A name in a distributed system is a string of bits or characters used to refer to an entity.
- An access point is an entity that provides an interface to operate on another entity, and its name is called an address (e.g., IP address and port number).
- An entity can have multiple access points, and its access point may change over time (e.g., a mobile computer getting a new IP address).
- An address is a special kind of name that refers to at most one entity and is unique to that entity, even when replicated.
Names, Identifiers, and Addresses
- A name can be location-independent, making it easier and more flexible to manage.
- An identifier is a unique name that refers to at most one entity, is unique to that entity, and always refers to the same entity (never reused).
- Examples of names, identifiers, and addresses include:
- Name of an FTP server (entity)
- URL of the FTP server
- Address of the FTP server (IP number: port number)
Name Spaces and Name Resolution
- Names in a distributed system are organized into a name space, which is generally a labeled, directed graph with two types of nodes: leaf nodes and directory nodes.
- Leaf nodes represent named entities and store information such as their addresses or state.
- Directory nodes are special entities with outgoing edges labeled with names, storing directory tables that represent outgoing edges as pairs (edge label, node identifier).
- Each node in a naming graph is an entity with an identifier, and a directory node stores a table of outgoing edges.
- A path in a naming graph can be referred to by the sequence of labels corresponding to the edges of the path and the first node in the path, called a path name.
- Path names can be absolute (starting from the root node) or relative, and may have multiple paths leading to the same node.
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Description
This quiz covers the basics of naming in computer networks, including the importance of naming, resolving names, and implementing a naming system in distributed systems.