Brief Announcement: Unifying Partial Synchrony

Authors Andrei Constantinescu , Diana Ghinea , Jakub Sliwinski , Roger Wattenhofer



PDF
Thumbnail PDF

File

LIPIcs.DISC.2024.43.pdf
  • Filesize: 0.59 MB
  • 7 pages

Document Identifiers

Author Details

Andrei Constantinescu
  • ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Diana Ghinea
  • ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Jakub Sliwinski
  • ETH Zürich, Switzerland
Roger Wattenhofer
  • ETH Zürich, Switzerland

Cite As Get BibTex

Andrei Constantinescu, Diana Ghinea, Jakub Sliwinski, and Roger Wattenhofer. Brief Announcement: Unifying Partial Synchrony. In 38th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 319, pp. 43:1-43:7, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2024.43

Abstract

The distributed computing literature considers multiple options for modeling communication. Most simply, communication is categorized as either synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous communication assumes that messages get delivered within a publicly known timeframe and that parties' clocks are synchronized. Asynchronous communication, on the other hand, only assumes that messages get delivered eventually. A more nuanced approach, or a middle ground between the two extremes, is given by the partially synchronous model, which is arguably the most realistic option. This model comes in two commonly considered flavors:  
ii) The Global Stabilization Time (GST) model: after an (unknown) amount of time, the network becomes synchronous. This captures scenarios where network issues are transient. 
iii) The Unknown Latency (UL) model: the network is, in fact, synchronous, but the message delay bound is unknown.  This work formally establishes that any time-agnostic property that can be achieved by a protocol in the UL model can also be achieved by a (possibly different) protocol in the GST model. By time-agnostic, we mean properties that can depend on the order in which events happen but not on time as measured by the parties. Most properties considered in distributed computing are time-agnostic. The converse was already known, even without the time-agnostic requirement, so our result shows that the two network conditions are, under one sensible assumption, equally demanding.

Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Distributed computing models
Keywords
  • partial synchrony
  • unknown latency
  • global stabilization time

Metrics

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

References

  1. Ittai Abraham. Flavours of partial synchrony, 2019. URL: https://decentralizedthoughts.github.io/2019-09-13-flavours-of-partial-synchrony/.
  2. Cynthia Dwork, Nancy Lynch, and Larry Stockmeyer. Consensus in the presence of partial synchrony. J. ACM, 35(2):288-323, April 1988. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/42282.42283.
  3. Michael J. Fischer, Nancy A. Lynch, and Michael S. Paterson. Impossibility of distributed consensus with one faulty process. J. ACM, 32(2):374-382, April 1985. URL: https://doi.org/10.1145/3149.214121.
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