[jira] [Created] (FLINK-5098) Detect network problems to eagerly time out ask operations

["Till Rohrmann (JIRA)" <ji...@apache.org>]

Till Rohrmann created FLINK-5098:
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             Summary: Detect network problems to eagerly time out ask operations
                 Key: FLINK-5098
                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/FLINK-5098
             Project: Flink
          Issue Type: Improvement
          Components: Distributed Coordination
    Affects Versions: 1.2.0
            Reporter: Till Rohrmann
            Assignee: Till Rohrmann
             Fix For: 1.2.0


Akka's ask operations are given a timeout after which they should fail with an {{AskTimeoutException}}. In some cases, however, it is possible to fail early because one has detected that the remote host is not reachable or that the actor does not exist on the remote {{ActorSystem}}.

Usually failing early if one cannot hope for a successful message delivery is a desirable behaviour since it speeds up recovery. 

I propose to send Akka's {{Identify}} message with each ask request. The identify message allows to detect unreachable/non-existing actors and, thus, enables us to fail the ask operation early.



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