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Using Error-Correcting Codes to Solve Distributed Agreement Problems: A Future Direction in Distributed Computing?

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Future Directions in Distributed Computing

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 2584))

Abstract

The Consensus problem lies at the heart of many distributed computing problems one has to solve when designing reliable applications on top of unreliable distributed asynchronous systems. There is a large literature where theoretical and practical aspects of this problem are studied1, that can be informally stated in terms of three requirements. Each process proposes a value, and has to decide on a value (termination) such that there is a single decided value (agreement), and the decided value is a proposed value (validity). One of the most fundamental impossibility results in distributed computing says that this apparently simple problem has no deterministic solution in an asynchronous system even if only one process may crash [3.9].To circumvent this impossibility, known as FLP, two main approaches have been investigated. One of them consists of relaxing the requirements of the problem, by either allowing for probabilistic solutions (e.g., [3.4]), or for approximate solutions (ε-agreement [3.8], or k-set agreement [3.6]). Another approach consists of enriching the system with synchrony assumptions until they allow the problem to be solved [3.7]. This approach has been abstracted in the notion of unreliable failure detectors [3.5]. There have also been studies of hybrid approaches, like combining failure detection with randomization [3.2], 3.21].

The distributed computing textbooks [3.3], [3.14] devote several chapters to this problem.

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References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, The Technion, Haifa, Israel

    Roy Friedman

  2. IRISA - Campus de Beaulieu, 35042, Rennes Cedex, France

    Achour Mostéfaoui & Michel Raynal

  3. HP Research Lab, 02139, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Sergio Rajsbaum

  4. Inst. Matem. UNAM, Mexico

    Sergio Rajsbaum

Authors
  1. Roy Friedman
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  2. Achour Mostéfaoui
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  3. Sergio Rajsbaum
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  4. Michel Raynal
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Faculté Informatique et Communication, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, IN-Ecublens, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland

    André Schiper

  2. Computer Science and Engineering, University of Connecticut, Unit 3155, 06269, Storrs, CT, USA

    Alex A. Shvartsman

  3. Computer Science Division, University of California at Berkeley, 447/443 Soda Hall, 94704-1776, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Hakim Weatherspoon  & Ben Y. Zhao  & 

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© 2003 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Friedman, R., Mostéfaoui, A., Rajsbaum, S., Raynal, M. (2003). Using Error-Correcting Codes to Solve Distributed Agreement Problems: A Future Direction in Distributed Computing?. In: Schiper, A., Shvartsman, A.A., Weatherspoon, H., Zhao, B.Y. (eds) Future Directions in Distributed Computing. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 2584. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-37795-6_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-37795-6_3

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-00912-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-37795-5

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