A communication mechanism called the gossip protocol allows distributed computers to share states. Most contemporary systems use this peer-to-peer protocol to distribute information to every member of a network or cluster.
In a decentralized system without a central node, this protocol is used to maintain track of every node and determine whether or not a node is offline.
Each node in the cluster can maintain track of state information about the other nodes, including which nodes are reachable and whose key ranges they are in charge of, thanks to the protocol (this is a copy of the hash ring). To maintain synchronization, nodes exchange state data. A peer-to-peer communication system called the gossip protocol allows nodes to regularly communicate state information about one another and other nodes they are aware of. Every second, each node starts a gossip round to communicate with another random node to exchange state information about itself and other nodes. This means that each new event will eventually spread across the system, and every node in a cluster will quickly become aware of every other node in the cluster.
