Distributed Operating Systems Fallacies of Distributed Operating

Distributed Operating Systems

Fallacies of Distributed Operating Systems

There are many fallacies to distributed operating systems, with the majority created due to incomplete, inaccurate and often wrong assumptions about how operating systems is designed. The concept of tenancy and topology being dependent on each other, where the topology determines the functionality of the operating systems is completely wrong. The latest development in Web Services, where ubiquity through software-based service that tracks the state or status of any application connected to it, makes topology irrelevant (Malatras, Asgari, Bauge, Irons, 2008). There are many examples of technology-based innovations further underscoring the fallacies of distributed operating systems.

Analysis of the Major Fallacies of Distributed Network Operating Systems

The main fallacies of distributed operating systems is that the network is reliable, which if the events surrounding Salesforce.com's outages on the Amazon Web Services service show, is incredibly erroneous. The fallacy of network latency being zero or nearly in real-time is also false as many factors go into the latency calculations for any transaction or query online. Distributed operating systems also initially assumed that due to their topology they would be inherently secure (Mullender, 1996). The many security breaches of networks including those on distributed operating systems have shown that the exact opposite is true. Windows for Workgroups (WFW) was one of the most porous and easily hacked shared distributed operating systems there was. As can be seen from the list of fallacies so far, they were created based on vendor mis-information and a lack of focus on the actual performance and attributes of these network operating systems. Vendor mis-information also is responsible for the fallacy of needing only one administrator, which implied a very low Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) (Mullender, 1996).