Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Nicholas J A Harvey

Jeffrey Bruce Parham

Mark Robbin Brown

William Birkin Lees

Laszlo Lovasz

Van H Vu

Katalin Vesztergombi

Marvin Michael Theimer

Alastair Wolman

John David Dunagan

Michael B Jones

Dejan Kostić

Dejan Kostic

A guaranteed distributed failure notification method is described, wherein a failure notification (FN) facility allows applications using the facility to create FN groups to which the application associates an application state. The application registers failure handlers with the FN facility on nodes in the FN group; each failure handler is associated with a specific FN group. When, on a given node, the FN facility learns of a failure in the FN group, the facility executes the associated failure handler on that node. System failures detected by the application are signaled to other FN group members using the facility. The facility detects system failures that occur in an overlay network on which the facility is implemented, and signals a failure notification to the other FN group members.

Method for providing guaranteed distributed failure notification

A method for designating communication paths in a computer network is provided, in which communication paths are designated for the transmission of data throughout a network. The network may have both recipient computers, which are the intended recipients of the data, and intermediary computers, which are not the intended recipients, but merely relay the data. Each intermediary computer is grouped with the 'closest' recipient computer (i.e. the recipient computer with whom it is 'least expensive' to communicate). Communication paths between the resulting groups are then identified. A representation of the network is then created. The representation replaces the intermediary computers with the inter-group communication paths, so that the inter-group communication paths appear to pass directly through the locations occupied by the intermediary computers. The created representation is then further processed so that the &#x201c;least expensive&#x201d; communication paths may be designated.

Method for designating communication paths in a network

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Nicholas J A Harvey