The course complements Distributed Systems, Basic Course, and prepares the students for M.Sc projects, and Ph.D. studies in the area of distributed systems.

The main objective of this course is to provide the students with a solid foundation for understanding, analyzing and designing distributed algorithms for reliable distributed systems.

More specifically after the course is completed the student will:

- Know how to specify the properties of distributed algorithms, so called liveness and safety properties.
- Explain the different models of distributed systems, including failure and timing models.
- Master basic algorithms for failure detection, leader elections, broadcast and multicast, basic shared memory in distributed systems, agreement protocols, and group communication.
- Practice in design and implementation of selected distributed algorithms in middleware designed for group communication.