Evaluation of a synchronous leader-based group membership protocol

Abstract: The group membership protocol is a mechanism that handle mobile nodes in a dynamic environment and provide and maintain these nodes in a membership. These nodes can, for instance, be seen as the increasing connected devices which lead to a more dynamic group of devices in systems like distributed systems. In this thesis, a synchronous leader-based group membership protocol (SLMP) is evaluated. By doing simulations where the SLMP gets to handle nodes joining and crashing in different frequencies in a noisy environment, while we vary the length of the timeout, the frequency of nodes joining and crashing, and the packet loss rate; we were able to establish that all these parameters affect the performance of the protocol in different ways. When nodes join and crash in a high frequency it is wise to have a short timeout, but if the packet loss rate also is high, then the performance of the protocol will decrease. However, if the packet loss rate is high, there still are possibilities for the protocol to deliver a good service, if the timeout is long enough and the rate that nodes join & crash is not too high.