Systems that depend on synchronization are desynchronized
causing them to fail or operate improperly. Examples include DCE servers
that may deny services network-wide when caused to become desynchronized
beyond some threshold, cryptographic systems which, once desynchronized may
take a substantial amount of time to resynchronize, automated software and
systems maintenance tools which may make complex decisions based on slight
time differences, and time-based locks which may be caused to open or close
at the wrong times.
Complexity: This problem appears to be similar in
complexity to the interrupt sequence mishandling problem.
[Voas93] It
appears, in general, to be factorial in the number of time-based decisions
made in a system, however, their may be substantial results in the field of
communicating sequential processes that lead to far simpler solutions for
large subclasses.
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