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Concept

Gossip Protocol

Technique

A communication technique in which nodes of a distributed system periodically exchange state information with a few randomly chosen peers, spreading updates across the whole system the way a rumor spreads through a population, without any central coordinator.

Facts
Origin Year
1987 1
Core Principle
Computer systems typically implement this type of protocol with a form of random 'peer selection': with a given frequency, each machine picks another machine at random and shares any rumors. 1
Connections

In Field

Sources
1. Gossip protocol - Wikipedia
  • References section
    Demers, Alan; Greene, Dan; Hauser, Carl; Irish, Wes; Larson, John (1987). Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance. Proceedings of the sixth annual ACM Symposium on Principles of distributed computing, PODC '87.
  • Communication section
    Computer systems typically implement this type of protocol with a form of random 'peer selection': with a given frequency, each machine picks another machine at random and shares any rumors.
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Frequently Asked Questions

When was the gossip protocol first described?

First described in 1987 by Demers, Greene, Hauser, Irish and Larson.

The gossip protocol was first described in 1987 by Alan Demers, Dan Greene, Carl Hauser, Wes Irish and John Larson in their paper Epidemic algorithms for replicated database maintenance, presented at the sixth annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing.
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