Foundations of Distributed Systems

Explain the fundamental challenges in distributed systems: partial failures, network unreliability, and unbounded latency.

Describe the implications of the lack of a global clock and synchronized time.

Apply logical clocks (Lamport timestamps) to establish a partial ordering of events.

Apply vector clocks to detect concurrent events and establish causal ordering.

Distinguish between safety and liveness properties in system guarantees.

Explain the CAP theorem (Consistency, Availability, Partition Tolerance) and its practical implications for system design.