The convergence between telecom and datacom is a two-way process, with both
worlds contributing their experience and best technology to the future
network. One area where telecom companies have extensive experience is
computer clustering, and more specifically, providing high-availability (HA)
systems by using such technology. A well-proven product from this application
area has now been released to open source.
Since the mid-nineties, telecom equipment vendor Ericsson has been developing
and deploying a tailor-made reliable communication protocol for their
cluster-based products. This protocol, called Transparent Inter Process
Communication (TIPC), has over the past two years undergone a significant
redesign and is now available as a portable source code package of about
12,000 lines of C code. The code implements a kernel driver, a design that
has made it possibl... (more)