Keywords and Synonyms
Consensus ; Byzantine generals; Interactive consistency
Problem Definition
The study of Pease, Shostak and Lamport was among the first to consider the problem of achieving a coordinated behavior between processors of a distributed system in the presence of failures [21]. Since the paper was published, this subject has grown into an extensive research area. Below is a presentation of the main findings regarding the specific questions addressed in their paper. In some cases this entry uses the currently accepted terminology in this subject, rather than the original terminology used by the authors.
System Model
A distributed system is considered to have n independent processors, p 1, ... ,p n , each modeled as a (possibly infinite) state machine. The processors are linked by a communication network that supports direct communication between every pair of processors. The processors can communicate only by exchanging messages, where the sender of every message can be...
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Recommended Reading
Attiya, H., Welch, J.L.: Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations and Advanced Topics. McGraw-Hill, UK (1998)
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Berman, P., Garay, J.A., Perry, K.J.: Optimal Early Stopping in Distributed Consensus. In: Proc. 6th International Workshop on Distributed Algorithms (WDAG), pp. 221–237, Israel, November 1992
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Pease, M.C., Shostak, R.E., Lamport, L.: Reaching Agreement in the Presence of Faults. J. ACM 27(2), 228–234 (1980)
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Toueg, S., Perry, K.J., Srikanth, T.K.: Fast Distributed Agreement. SIAM J. Comput. 16(3), 445–457 (1987)
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Okun, M. (2008). Byzantine Agreement. In: Kao, MY. (eds) Encyclopedia of Algorithms. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-30162-4_60
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