[cs63201] Regarding AOS

[Mikhail Nesterenko]

> Dear Professor,
> 
> I am confused with "weakly fairness". Could you please explain it in a easy
> way with an example?

Weak fairness is described in "Fundamentals of Fault-Tolerant
Distributed Computing in Asynchronous Environments" by Felix Gartner
that is "Additional Reading Material" section of the course's website

> 
> Could you please explain a little bit how every property is intersection of
> safety and liveness property?

Safety and liveness are treated extensively in "Defining Liveness" By
Alpern and Schneider also available in Additional Reading Material
section.


> 
> What are the application of wave and traversal algorithms. we see that a
> one or more process decides eventually but what next? What is done after
> decision is made? why do need a process to decide?

Wave and Traversal algorithms are the simplest distributed algorithms
to study so we study them first to familiarize ourselves with dealing
with distributed algorithms. Both are used with information
propagation to the distributed system or gathering of information
about distributed system. For example, later we will study
termination detection that uses wave algorithms.

Thanks,
--
Mikhail