Epidemic networking

We've already adopted the "virus" paradigm from the biologists, so why not use other natural phenomenon to describe - and improve - networking? Werner Vogels offers links to papers on epidemic techniques for distributing data across large networks of servers. Rather than using bandwidth-intensive synchronized replication, epidemic systems try to mimic disease epidemics for distributing data. This happens via algorithms that use randomization techiques to ensure that, eventually, every server is "infected" with new data. One technique is a bit anthrocentric - it's called "rumor mongering" (although since these are computers we're talking about, one presumes the message doesn't degrade or change from one recipient to the next).