Patent attributes
A system enabled for fault-tolerant symmetric multi-computing using a group of nodes is described hereon. A symmetrical group of nodes networked using a reliable, ordered, and atomic group-to-group TCP communication system is used in providing fault-tolerance and single system image to client applications. The communication between the client and the group is standards based. The processing load is shared among a group of nodes with transparent distribution of tasks to application segments. The system is fault-tolerant in that if a node fails remaining replicas if any continue service without disruption of service or connection. Nodes may be added to or retired from the group in a manner transparent to the client as well as server applications.