Hey everybody,

I am excited to release the second chapter of Thinking in Distributed Systems.

In this chapter, we will define the notion of system models and explore frequently used system models such as synchronous and asynchronous distributed systems and explore the concepts of order, physical time, and logical time.

The goal of this chapter is to gain an understanding of the state of affairs or forces at play that determine and constrain the behavior of distributed systems.

Objectives:

Understand synchronous and asynchronous systems
Understand component and network behavior
Understand the concepts of order, physical time, and logical time

Although this chapter may not be the most thrilling, system models are an essential stepping stone in our journey of exploring distributed systems － We will put our hard-earned knowledge to good use in the next chapter on Failure Tolerance.

My goal is to make distributed systems approachable and understandable. If you have trouble understanding the material, it’s not on you, it’s on me. So please reach out to me at dominik.tornow@icloud.com or send me a dm on twitter at @DominikTornow with questions, comments, and feedback, I want to make sure that you get the most out of this book.

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Thinking in Distributed Systems • Chapter 12

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