DISTRIBUTED PROTOCOL FOR MAINTAINING CENTRAL NETWORK CONTROL.

Centralized communication network control in a session-oriented network requires maintenance of sessions from each node in the network to the central controller. The present paper presents and validates a distributed protocol for establishing and maintaining those sessions in the presence of topological changes. The protocol ensures that in steady state, i. e. , a finite time after all changes cease, sessions exist from the central controller to each node in the connected network and the central controller has a correct view of the network topology. The authors also demonstrate that a naive approach to session maintenance deadlocks as a result of dynamic events that may occur in a distributed environment.