Stheno, a real-time fault-tolerant P2P middleware platform for light-train systems

Abstract

Large scale information systems, such as public information systems for light-train/metro networks, must be able to fulfill contractualized Service Level Agreements (SLAs) in terms of end-to-end latencies and jitter, even in the presence of faults. Failure to do so has potential legal and financial implications for the software developers. Current middleware solutions have a hard time coping with these demands due, fundamentally, to a lack of adequate, simultaneous, support for fault-tolerance (FT) and real-time (RT) tasks. In this paper we present Stheno, a general purpose peer-to-peer (P2P) middleware system that builds on previous work from TAO and MEAD to provide: (a) configurable, transparent, FT support by taking advantage of the P2P layer topology awareness to efficiently implement Common Of The Shelf (COTS) replication algorithms and replica management strategies, and; (b) kernel-level resource reservation integrated with well-known threading strategies based on priorities to provide more robust support for soft real-time tasks. An evaluation of the first (unoptimized) prototype for the middleware shows that Stheno is able to match and often greatly exceed the SLA agreements provided by our target system, the light-train/metro information system developed and maintained by EFACEC, and currently deployed at multiple cities in Europe and Brazil. Copyright 2012 ACM.