THE EAST AFRICAN UNIVERSITY (TEAU)

SCHOOL OF COMPUTER SCIENCE AND IT

DEPARTMENT OF COMPUTER SCIENCE
JAN – APRIL 2019, MAIN EXAMINATION

COURSE : DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS

CODE : CIT 4102
TIME : 2 Hours

INSTRUCTIONS
1. The Paper is made up of FIVE (5) Questions, question ONE is compulsory plus any
other TWO questions.
2. Credit is given for legibility, clarity of expressions and use of relevant illustrations.
3. Clearly write your registration number on each answer sheet used.

DO NOT WRITE ANYWHERE ON THIS QUESTION PAPER

QUESTION ONE (30 MARKS)

a) Define distributed operating system [2 marks]
b) Discuss four characteristics of a distributed operating system. [8 marks]
c) Differentiate between data migration and process migration. Give two probable reasons
for each case [6 marks]
d) State and explain any five desirable features of a message passing system [5 marks]
e) Processes communicate via messages. Each message sent across the network has two
main parts – header and body of the message. The header contains addressing for the
receiver. Described the information found in the header [4 marks]
f) Describe five issues to be considered when designing load balancing algorithms
[5 marks]
QUESTION TWO (20 MARKS)

a) With an aid of a diagram, discuss the layered communication protocol while specifying
the protocols used at each layer. [15 marks]
b) Differentiate between file-level transfer mode and block-level transfer model. Give two
advantages of each case. [5 marks]

1
QUESTION THREE (20 MARKS)

a) Using diagrams, differentiate between single message buffer and multiple message
buffer [10 marks]
b) For proper resource utilization, load in a distributed system should be evenly
distributed. Discuss [6 marks]
c) Differentiate between syntactic and semantic transparency with respect to remote
procedure call. Explain why it is easier to achieve syntactic transparency than semantic
transparency. [4 marks]
QUESTION FOUR (20 MARKS)
a) Discuss how scaling is achieved in distributed operating systems
[6 marks]
b) Discuss FOUR goals of distributed operating systems. [8 marks]
c) Explain THREE types of routing strategies and THREE of connection strategies.
[6 marks]
QUESTION FIVE (20 MARKS)

a) Describe the procedure involved for a Remote Procedure Call (RPC) process take
place. [10 marks]
b) Explain five advantages of file replication. [10 marks]