Distributed system design using only C

Question

I have the work of implementing a distributed system of nodes (like p2p nodes) each of these nodes (lets say A,B,C and D) perform certain functions and need to interact with

Answer 1

I won't try to give a "whole" answer (because the question is way too large & vague anyways) but I could point you towards an interesting piece of the puzzle:

1. You could use a Message Queuing system (e.g. AMQP RabbitMQ: there is an experimental C binding available) to implement reliable message delivery between your nodes.

2. Mutual Exclusion: you can use a protocol such as Paxos

Answer 2

The secret to prevent blocking is your end points must all be written as servers with threads for "protocol" processing that are separate from the threads for data processing.

As for line protocol, I've become enamored with JSON for line protocol. It is human readable. It is streamable without need for length bytes! It is easily extensible and mostly immune to protocol version change.

Answer 3

Yet another piece of software worth a look could be KadC!

http://kadc.sourceforge.net