Multicast in a Virtually

This paper presents the deenition and solution to the uniform reliable multicast problem in the virtually synchronous environment deened by the Isis system. A uniform reliable multicast of a message m has the property that if m has been received by any destination process (faulty or not), then m is received by all processes that reach a decision. Uniform reliable mul-ticast provides a solution to the distributed commit problem. The paper deenes two multicast primitives in the virtually synchronous model: reliable multicast (called view-atomic) and uniform reliable multicast (called uniform view-atomic). The view-atomic mul-ticast is used to implement the uniform view-atomic primitive. As view-atomicity is based on the concept of process group membership, the paper establishes a connection between the process group membership and the distributed commit problems.