The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing

• December 11, 2003
• Computers  

RISKS digest recently posted a link to the following. It’s definitely worth repeating in as many places as possible.

The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing

Peter Deutsch

Essentially everyone, when they first build a distributed application, makes the following eight assumptions. All prove to be false in the long run and all cause big trouble and painful learning experiences.

1. The network is reliable
2. Latency is zero
3. Bandwidth is infinite
4. The network is secure
5. Topology doesn’t change
6. There is one administrator
7. Transport cost is zero
8. The network is homogeneous

EDIT: Added the first fallacy, which I missed when I first posted it: The network is reliable. Oops!