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International Conference On Principles Of Distributed Systems

OPODIS 2013: Principles of Distributed Systems pp 1–10Cite as

Tutorial Summary: Paxos Explained from Scratch

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8304))

Abstract

Paxos is a flexible and fault tolerant protocol for solving the consensus problem, where participants in a distributed system need to agree on a common value. However, Paxos is reputed for being difficult to understand. This tutorial aims to address this difficulty by visualizing Paxos in a completely new way. Starting from a naive solution and strong assumptions, Paxos is derived in a step-wise fashion. In each step, minimal changes are made to the solution and assumptions, aimed at understanding why the solution fails. In this manner, a correct solution that corresponds to Paxos is eventually reached.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Stavanger, Norway

    Hein Meling & Leander Jehl

Authors
  1. Hein Meling
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  2. Leander Jehl
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale ”Antonio Ruberti”, Sapienza Research Center of Cyber Intelligence and Information Security and Università degli Studi di Roma ”La Sapienza”, Via Ariosto 25, 00185, Rome, Italy

    Roberto Baldoni

  2. CNRS, 13S, UMR 7271, Inria France and Université Nice Sophia Antipolis, 06900, Sophia Antipolis, France

    Nicolas Nisse

  3. Department of Computer Science, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Maarten van Steen

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© 2013 Springer International Publishing Switzerland

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Meling, H., Jehl, L. (2013). Tutorial Summary: Paxos Explained from Scratch. In: Baldoni, R., Nisse, N., van Steen, M. (eds) Principles of Distributed Systems. OPODIS 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 8304. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03850-6_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-03850-6_1

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-03849-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-03850-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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