FINAL EXAM 

Distributed System – Fall 2021 (Open-book Exam) 

Duration: 120 minutes 

Question 1: Characteristic of Distributed System (20 marks) 

a. List and describe any 4 characteristics of distributed systems. 

b. Give 2 types of hardware resource and 2 types of data or software

resource that can usefully be shared as it occurs in distributed

systems. 

Question 2: Name Services (20 marks) 

a. Consider the URL in the table below. 

http://hanu.edu.vn:8081/DSYCourse/MD.pdf 

Illustrate with help of a diagram the results of a DNS lookup and an

ARP lookup assuming we are using IPv4. 

b. Is it possible for a DNS server to provide multiple answers to a single

name lookup? When and Why? 

c. Explain the use of 

i. aliases in name services 

ii. caching servers to enhance availability 

Question 3: Time Synchronization (30 marks) 

A client attempts to synchronize with a time server. It records the round-trip

times and timestamps returned by the server in the table below. 

  
a. Which of these times should it use to set its clock? To what time

should it set it? 

b. Estimate the accuracy of the setting with respect to the server’s

clock. 

c. If it is known that the time between sending and receiving a message

in the system concerned is at least 8 ms, do your answers change? 

Question 4: Fault Tolerance (30 marks) 

a. Three computers together provide a replicated service. The

manufacturers claim that each computer has a mean time between

failure of five days; a failure typically takes four hours to fix. What is

the availability of the replicated service? 

b. Explain the difference between linearizability and sequential

consistency, and why the latter is more practical to implement, in

general. 
 c. Explain why allowing backups to process read operations leads to

sequentially consistent rather than linearizable executions in a

passive replication system. 

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