Sudhir Menon

A slow receiver is a node in a distributed system that can't process incoming messages due to network bandwidth issues, CPU issues, I/O issues or a combination of these factors. In all cases, the slow receiver either fails to pick up data from its incoming network buffers, causing the system to bottleneck, or fails to send application- or protocol-level acknowledgements that would let the sender proceed. Slow receivers represent a performance problem in a distributed system. When using TCP or multicast, the presence of a slow receiver causes other members of the distributed system to slow down, and in extreme cases brings system throughput to a complete stand still. In connection-oriented protocols like TCP, the sender has to copy data into its kernel buffers and send it out to each receiver individually. The send completes only when the data has been delivered to t... (more)