Meetup #53 - Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System

This time we will discuss an article that is considered to be one of the "classics": Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System by Leslie Lamport (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.142.3682&rep=rep1&type=pdf) (pdf).

The abstract from the article:

The concept of one event happening before another in a distributed system is examined, and is shown to define a partial ordering of the events. A distributed algorithm is given for synchronizing a system of logical clocks which can be used to totally order the events. The use of the total ordering is illustrated with a method for solving synchronization problems. The algorithm is then specialized for synchronizing physical clocks, and a bound is derived on how far out of synchrony the clocks can become.

For those of you who like to learn by listening, there is also a recording of a lecture (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ilCpoREhqrM) that (at least partially) covers the topic.