Null Messages, Information and Coordination

Authors Raïssa Nataf , Guy Goren , Yoram Moses



PDF
Thumbnail PDF

File

LIPIcs.DISC.2023.30.pdf
  • Filesize: 1.38 MB
  • 21 pages

Document Identifiers

Author Details

Raïssa Nataf
  • Technion, Haifa, Israel
Guy Goren
  • Protocol Labs, Haifa, Israel
Yoram Moses
  • Technion, Haifa, Israel

Cite As Get BibTex

Raïssa Nataf, Guy Goren, and Yoram Moses. Null Messages, Information and Coordination. In 37th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 281, pp. 30:1-30:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2023.30

Abstract

This paper investigates the role that null messages play in synchronous systems with and without failures, and provides necessary and sufficient conditions on the structure of protocols for information transfer and coordination there. We start by introducing a new and more refined definition of null messages. A generalization of message chains that allow these null messages is provided, and is shown to be necessary and sufficient for information transfer in reliable systems. Coping with crash failures requires a much richer structure, since not receiving a message may be the result of the sender’s failure. We introduce a class of communication patterns called resilient message blocks, which impose a stricter condition on protocols than the silent choirs of Goren and Moses (2020). Such blocks are shown to be necessary for information transfer in crash-prone systems. Moreover, they are sufficient in several cases of interest, in which silent choirs are not. Finally, a particular combination of resilient message blocks is shown to be necessary and sufficient for solving the Ordered Response coordination problem.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Distributed algorithms
  • Computing methodologies → Reasoning about belief and knowledge
Keywords
  • null messages
  • fault tolerance
  • coordination
  • information flow
  • knowledge analysis

Metrics

  • Access Statistics
  • Total Accesses (updated on a weekly basis)
    0
    PDF Downloads

References

  1. Eugene S. Amdur, Samuel M. Weber, and Vassos Hadzilacos. On the message complexity of binary byzantine agreement under crash failures. Distributed Computing, 5(4):175-186, 1992. Google Scholar
  2. Ido Ben-Zvi and Yoram Moses. On interactive knowledge with bounded communication. Journal of Applied Non-Classical Logics, 21(3-4):323-354, 2011. URL: http://jancl.e-revues.com/article.jsp?articleId=17078.
  3. Ido Ben-Zvi and Yoram Moses. Beyond lamport’s happened-before: On time bounds and the ordering of events in distributed systems. Journal of the ACM (JACM), 61(2):1-26, 2014. Google Scholar
  4. K. M. Chandy and J. Misra. How processes learn. Distributed Computing, 1(1):40-52, 1986. Google Scholar
  5. Danny Dolev. The byzantine generals strike again. Journal of algorithms, 3(1):14-30, 1982. Google Scholar
  6. Ronald Fagin, Joseph Y Halpern, Yoram Moses, and Moshe Y Vardi. Reasoning About Knowledge. MIT Press, 1995. URL: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/5803.001.0001.
  7. Guy Goren and Yoram Moses. Silence. J. ACM, 67:3:1-3:26, 2020. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3377883.
  8. Guy Goren and Yoram Moses. Optimistically tuning synchronous byzantine consensus: another win for null messages. Distributed Comput., 34(5):395-410, 2021. URL: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00446-021-00393-8.
  9. Rachid Guerraoui and Jingjing Wang. How fast can a distributed transaction commit? In Emanuel Sallinger, Jan Van den Bussche, and Floris Geerts, editors, Proceedings of the 36th ACM SIGMOD-SIGACT-SIGAI Symposium on Principles of Database Systems, PODS 2017, Chicago, IL, USA, May 14-19, 2017, pages 107-122. ACM, 2017. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3034786.3034799.
  10. Vassos Hadzilacos and Joseph Y. Halpern. Message-optimal protocols for byzantine agreement. Mathematical Systems Theory, 26(1):41-102, 1993. Google Scholar
  11. Alex Kogan and Erez Petrank. A methodology for creating fast wait-free data structures. In ACM SIGPLAN Notices, volume 47, pages 141-150. ACM, 2012. Google Scholar
  12. L. Lamport. Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system. Communications of the ACM, 21(7):558-565, 1978. Google Scholar
  13. Leslie Lamport. Using time instead of timeout for fault-tolerant distributed systems. ACM Trans. Program. Lang. Syst., 6:254-280, 1984. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/2993.2994.
  14. Kfir Lev-Ari, Alexander Spiegelman, Idit Keidar, and Dahlia Malkhi. Fairledger: A fair blockchain protocol for financial institutions. In Pascal Felber, Roy Friedman, Seth Gilbert, and Avery Miller, editors, 23rd International Conference on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2019, December 17-19, 2019, Neuchâtel, Switzerland, volume 153 of LIPIcs, pages 4:1-4:17. Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik, 2019. URL: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.OPODIS.2019.4.
  15. Barbara Liskov. Practical uses of synchronized clocks in distributed systems. Distributed Computing, 6(4):211-219, 1993. Google Scholar
  16. Yoram Moses. Relating knowledge and coordinated action: The knowledge of preconditions principle. In Proceedings of TARK,, pages 231-245, 2015. URL: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.1606.07525.
  17. Raïssa Nataf, Guy Goren, and Yoram Moses. Null messages, information and coordination, 2023. URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2208.10866.
Questions / Remarks / Feedback
X

Feedback for Dagstuhl Publishing


Thanks for your feedback!

Feedback submitted

Could not send message

Please try again later or send an E-mail