A Garbage Detection Protocol for a Realistic Distributed Object-Support System

We present a new protocol for the distributed detection of garbage, suitable for a low-level distributed object-support system. It is based on realistic assumptions: messages may be lost or duplicated; sites may crash; an object may migrate or be deleted. The protocol uses only information local to each site, or exchanged between pairs of sites; no global mechanism is necessary. It is parallel and should scale to extremely large systems. It takes into account the object-finding protocol. Its interface is designed for maximum independence from other components. R'esum'e Nous pr'esentons un nouveau protocole pour la d'etection r'epartie des miettes. Il se prete `a une mise en oeuvre au niveau syst`eme. Il se base sur des hypoth`eses r'ealistes : un message peut se perdre ou etre dupliqu'e ; un site peut crasher ; un objet peut migrer ou etre effac'e. Ce protocole n'utilise que des informations locales `a un site, ou 'echang'ees entre deux sites ; aucun m'ecanisme global n'est n'ecessai..