The Gossip Protocol in Cloud Computing

Gossip Protocol is a communication protocol, it is process computer to computer communication that works on the same principle as how information is shared on social networks. Nowadays, most of the systems often use gossip protocols to solve problems that might be difficult to solve in other ways, either due to inconvenience in the structure, is extremely large, or because gossip solutions are the most efficient ones available.

The modern distributed systems use this peer to peer gossip protocol to make sure that the information is disseminated to all the members in the network. Gossip protocol is referred to as Epidemic Protocol as it disseminates or spreads the data the same way as an epidemic spreads a virus in a biological habitat.

There are 3 main types of gossip protocol:

1. Dissemination Protocols :
   These protocols are also referred to as rumor-mongering protocols because they use gossip to spread information throughout the network, they flood the members of the network with gossips in a way that produces the worst-case load.
2. Anti-Entropy Protocols :
   These are used to repair the replicated data by comparing them and modifying the comparisons.
3. Protocols that compute aggregates :
   These protocols work by or compute an aggregate of the network by sampling information at the nodes and they combine the values to acquire a system-wide value – the largest value for some measurement nodes are making, smallest, etc.

Implementation of gossip protocol in Cloud Computing :
The Gossip protocol is used to repair the problems caused by multicasting; it is a type of communication where a piece of information or gossip in this scenario, is sent from one or more nodes to a set of other nodes in a network. This is useful when a group of clients in the network require the same data at the same time. But there are many problems that occur during multicasting, if there are many nodes present at the recipient end, latency increases; the average time for a receiver to receive a multicast.

To get this multicast message or gossip across the desired targets in the group, the gossip protocol sends out the gossip periodically to random nodes in the network, once a random node receives the gossip, it is said to be infected due to the gossip. Now the random node that receives the gossip does the same thing as the sender, it sends multiple copies of the gossip to random targets. This process continues until the target nodes get the multicast. This process turns the infected nodes to uninfected nodes after sending the gossip out to random nodes.