Hybrid distributed consensus

Roy Friedman, Gabriel Kliot, Alex Kogan

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

Abstract

Inspired by the proliferation of cloud-based services, this paper studies consensus, one of the most fundamental distributed computing problems, in a hybrid model of computation. In this model, processes (or nodes) exchange information by passing messages or by accessing a reliable and highly-available register hosted in the cloud. The paper presents a formal definition of the model and problem, and studies performance tradeoffs related to using such a register. Specifically, it proves a lower bound on the number of register accesses in deterministic protocols, and gives a simple deterministic protocol that meets this bound when the register is compare-and-swap (CAS). In addition, two efficient protocols are presented; the first one is probabilistic and solves consensus with a single CAS register access in expectation, while the second one is deterministic and requires a single CAS register access when some favorable network conditions occur. A benefit of those protocols is that they can ensure both liveness and safety, and only their efficiency is affected by the probabilistic and timing assumptions.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationPrinciples of Distributed Systems - 17th International Conference, OPODIS 2013, Proceedings
Pages145-159
Number of pages15
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013
Event17th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2013 - Rouen, France
Duration: 16 Dec 201318 Dec 2013

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume8304 LNCS

Conference

Conference17th International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2013
Country/TerritoryFrance
CityRouen
Period16/12/1318/12/13

Keywords

  • Consensus
  • cloud computing
  • lower bounds
  • message passing

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Theoretical Computer Science
  • General Computer Science

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