@inproceedings
{
  Schuett2003,

  author        = "Thorsten Sch{\"u}tt and Florian Schintke and 
                   Alexander Reinefeld",
  title         = "Efficient Synchronization of Replicated Data in 
                   Distributed Systems",
  booktitle     = "Computational Science - ICCS 2003, International 
                   Conference Melbourne, Australia and St. Petersburg, 
                   Russia, Proceedings, Part I",
  editor        = "Peter M.A. Sloot and David Abramson and Alexander 
                   V. Bogdanov and Jack J. Dongarra and Albert 
                   Y. Zomaya and Yuriy E. Gorbachev",
  pages         = "274--283",
  series        = "Lecture Notes in Computer Science",
  volume        = "2657",
  publisher     = "Springer",
  month         = "June",
  year          = "2003",
  abstract      = "We present nsync, a tool for synchronizing large
                   replicated data sets in distributed systems. nsync
                   computes nearly optimal synchronization plans based
                   on a hierarchy of gossip algorithms that take the
                   network topology into account. Our primary design
                   goals were maximum performance and maximum
                   scalability. We achieved these goals by exploiting
                   parallelism in the planning and the synchronization
                   phase, by omitting transfer of unnecessary
                   metadata, by synchronizing at a block level rather
                   than a file level, and by using sophisticated
                   compression methods. With its relaxed consistency
                   semantic, nsync neither needs a master copy nor a
                   quorum for updating distributed replicas. Each
                   replica is kept as an autonomous entity and can be
                   modified with the usual tools."
}