METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR COMMUNICATION BETWEEN COMPUTER SYSTEMS USING SLIDING TRANSMISSION WINDOW FOR ORDERED MESSAGE IN CLUSTER COMPUTER ENVIRONMENT

摘要

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an apparatus and a method by which a sliding transmission window is used for communicating with another computer in a cluster. SOLUTION: A cluster computer system has a plurality of computer systems (or nodes) which can become members of a group working on a specific task and are connected to each other through one or more networks. Each node includes a cluster communication mechanism incorporating a cluster engine and the sliding transmission window, and one or more service tasks which process messages. The sliding transmission window enables the node to transmit a plurality of messages without waiting for individual acknowledgements to the messages. The sliding transmission window also enables the node to transmit a single confirmation message with respect to a plurality of received messages when the node receives the messages.