The Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing

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. The topology doesn’t change.

6. There is one administrator.

7. Transport cost is zero.

8. The network is homogeneous.

Source:

• Peter Deutsch: https://blogs.oracle.com/jag/resource/Fallacies.html
  previously: http://today.java.net/jag/Fallacies.html

• Wikipedia article

Additional resources:

• Fallacies of distributed computing explained, A Rotem-Gal-Oz
  http://www.rgoarchitects.com/Files/fallacies.pdf

• There is No Now, J Sheehy, CACM v58 n5, May 2015 pp 36-41
  http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/5/186019-there-is-no-now/abstract
  http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/2740000/2733108/p36-sheehy.pdf