Approved by First Reader

I am most grateful to Prof. Abdelsalam Heddaya for his friendship and enthusiasm in teaching and pursuing systems research with me. He has been my de facto systems advisor, being instrumental in opening my eyes toward distributed systems research. His active interest and encouragement has been of great help in furthering my efforts in this area, and his willingness to explore new ideas at a moment's notice has led to a fruitful collaboration with our share of deadline battlemarks. I would like to extend my appreciation and thanks to Prof. Azer Bestavros and Prof. Marina Chen for their gracious help and advice with many important things. Their kindness and efforts on my behalf were invaluable and I am forever in their debt