What does 'eventual consistency' refer to in distributed systems?

Eventual consistency is a concept commonly used in distributed systems that describes a model where updates to data are not required to be immediately consistent across all nodes, but rather, the system guarantees that if no new updates are made to a given piece of data, eventually, all accesses to that data will return the last updated value.

In option C, the description captures this essence accurately. It emphasizes that updates propagate through the system, which means that while the changes may not be seen immediately on all nodes, over time, all replicas of the data will converge to a consistent state reflecting the latest updates.

This approach is particularly useful in situations where availability and partition tolerance are prioritized over strict consistency, which is a hallmark of many distributed systems, especially those following the CAP theorem. The eventual consistency model allows for higher throughput and fault tolerance, facilitating a more robust system in distributed computing environments.