Examples of Distributed Systems

Google has put significant effort into distributed system design through things like: - distributed physical infrastructure - distributed file systems - distributed storage systems - distributed lock service - programming model that supports parallel/distributed computations

MMORPGs

Online games rely on distributed systems for reasons such as: - players require fast response times - events must propagate in real time to many players

Financial Trading

The financial industry has long been at the cutting edge of distributed systems technology. Emphasis is on the communication and processing of events with a focus on reliability and efficiency across a large number of clients. These systems are known as distributed event systems and are covered more in Chapter 6.