Jin, Jiaxi2016-08-012016-08-012013https://hdl.handle.net/2144/17152We are interested on the problem of synchronizing data on two distinct devices with differed priorities using minimum communication. A variety of distributed sys- tems require communication efficient and prioritized synchronization, for example, where the bandwidth is limited or certain information is more time sensitive than others. Our particular approach, P-CPI, involving the interactive synchronization of prioritized data, is efficient both in communication and computation. This protocol sports some desirable features, including (i) communication and computational com- plexity primarily tied to the number of di erences between the hosts rather than the amount of the data overall and (ii) a memoryless fast restart after interruption. We provide a novel analysis of this protocol, with proved high-probability performance bound and fast-restart in logarithmic time. We also provide an empirical model for predicting the probability of complete synchronization as a function of time and symmetric differences. We then consider two applications of our core algorithm. The first is a string reconciliation protocol, for which we propose a novel algorithm with online time com- plexity that is linear in the size of the string. Our experimental results show that our string reconciliation protocol can potentially outperform existing synchroniza- tion tools such like rsync in some cases. We also look into the benefit brought by our algorithm to delay-tolerant networks(DTNs). We propose an optimized DTN routing protocol with P-CPI implemented as middleware. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate improved delivery rate, reduced metadata and reduced average delay.en-USSynchronizing dataPrioritized dataThesis/Dissertation