Fault-tolerant Agreement in Synchronous Message-passing Systems

Michel Raynal

jun 2022 · Springer Nature

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Understanding distributed computing is not an easy task. This is due to the many facets of uncertainty one has to cope with and master in order to produce correct distributed software. A previous book Communication and Agreement Abstraction for Fault-tolerant Asynchronous Distributed Systems (published by Morgan & Claypool, 2010) was devoted to the problems created by crash failures in asynchronous message-passing systems. The present book focuses on the way to cope with the uncertainty created by process failures (crash, omission failures and Byzantine behavior) in synchronous message-passing systems (i.e., systems whose progress is governed by the passage of time). To that end, the book considers fundamental problems that distributed synchronous processes have to solve. These fundamental problems concern agreement among processes (if processes are unable to agree in one way or another in presence of failures, no non-trivial problem can be solved). They are consensus, interactive consistency, k-set agreement and non-blocking atomic commit. Being able to solve these basic problems efficiently with provable guarantees allows applications designers to give a precise meaning to the words ""cooperate"" and ""agree"" despite failures, and write distributed synchronous programs with properties that can be stated and proved. Hence, the aim of the book is to present a comprehensive view of agreement problems, algorithms that solve them and associated computability bounds in synchronous message-passing distributed systems. Table of Contents: List of Figures / Synchronous Model, Failure Models, and Agreement Problems / Consensus and Interactive Consistency in the Crash Failure Model / Expedite Decision in the Crash Failure Model / Simultaneous Consensus Despite Crash Failures / From Consensus to k-Set Agreement / Non-Blocking Atomic Commit in Presence of Crash Failures / k-Set Agreement Despite Omission Failures / Consensus Despite Byzantine Failures / Byzantine Consensus in Enriched Models

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Michel Raynal is a professor of computer science at the University of Rennes, France. His main research interests are the basic principles of distributed computing systems. Michel Raynal is the author of numerous papers on distributed algorithms and a world leading re[1]searcher in the domain of distributed computing. He has chaired the program committee of the major conferences on the topic, such as the IEEE Int’l Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), the Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), the Int’l Colloquium on Structural Information and Communication Complexity (SIROCCO), and the Int’l Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS). He has also served on the program committees of many international conferences, and he is the recipient of several “Best Paper” awards. Michel Raynal has been invited by many universities all over the world to give lectures on distributed computing.