Brief Announcement: Effects of Topology Knowledge and Relay Depth on Asynchronous Consensus

Consider an asynchronous incomplete directed network. We study the feasibility and efficiency of approximate crash-tolerant consensus under different restrictions on topology knowledge and relay depth, i.e., the maximum number of hops any message can be relayed

Effects of Topology Knowledge and Relay Depth on Asynchronous Appoximate Consensus

Consider a point-to-point message-passing network. We are interested in the asynchronous crash-tolerant consensus problem in incomplete networks. We study the feasibility and efficiency of approximate consensus under different restrictions on topology knowledge and the relay depth, i.e., the maximum number of hops any message can be relayed. These two constraints are common in large-scale networks, and are used to avoid memory overload and network congestion respectively. Specifically, for positive integer values k and k\u27, we consider that each node knows all its neighbors of at most k-hop distance (k-hop topology knowledge), and the relay depth is k\u27. We consider both directed and undirected graphs. More concretely, we answer the following question in asynchronous systems: "What is a tight condition on the underlying communication graphs for achieving approximate consensus if each node has only a k-hop topology knowledge and relay depth k\u27?" To prove that the necessary conditions presented in the paper are also sufficient, we have developed algorithms that achieve consensus in graphs satisfying those conditions: - The first class of algorithms requires k-hop topology knowledge and relay depth k. Unlike prior algorithms, these algorithms do not flood the network, and each node does not need the full topology knowledge. We show how the convergence time and the message complexity of those algorithms is affected by k, providing the respective upper bounds. - The second set of algorithms requires only one-hop neighborhood knowledge, i.e., immediate incoming and outgoing neighbors, but needs to flood the network (i.e., relay depth is n, where n is the number of nodes). One result that may be of independent interest is a topology discovery mechanism to learn and "estimate" the topology in asynchronous directed networks with crash faults

Reliable communication via semilattice properties of partial knowledge

A fundamental communication primitive in distributed computing is Reliable Message Transmission (RMT), which refers to the task of correctly sending a message from a party to another, despite the presence of Byzantine corruptions. In this work we address the problem in the general adversary model of Hirt and Maurer [5], which subsumes earlier models such as the global or local threshold adversaries. Regarding the topology knowledge, we employ the recently introduced Partial Knowledge Model [12], which encompasses both the full knowledge and the ad hoc model; the latter assumes knowledge of the local neighborhood only. Our main contribution is a tight condition for achieving RMT in the partial knowledge model under a general adversary. A key algorithmic tool that we define and use is the joint view operation which imposes a semilattice structure on the partial knowledge possessed by different parties. In this context, we prove that the worst possible adversary structure, conforming with the initial knowledge of a set of parties, can be expressed as the supremum of the parties’ knowledge under the semilattice partial order. The new operation allows for the definition of an appropriate network separator notion that yields a necessary condition for achieving RMT. In order to show the sufficiency of the condition, we propose the RMT Partial Knowledge Algorithm (RMT-PKA), an algorithm that also employs the joint view operation to solve RMT whenever the condition is met. This implies that RMT-PKA achieves reliable message transmission in every instance where this is possible, therefore it is a unique algorithm [13]. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first unique protocol for RMT against general adversaries in the partial knowledge model. Due to the generality of the model, our results provide, for any level of topology knowledge and any adversary structure, an exact characterization of instances where RMT is possible and an algorithm to achieve RMT on such instances

Reliable Broadcast with Respect to Topology Knowledge

We study the Reliable Broadcast problem in incomplete networks against a Byzantine adversary. We examine the problem under the locally bounded adversary model of Koo (2004) and the general adversary model of Hirt and Maurer (1997) and explore the tradeoff between the level of topology knowledge and the solvability of the problem. We refine the local pair-cut technique of Pelc and Peleg (2005) in order to obtain impossibility results for every level of topology knowledge and any type of corruption distribution. On the positive side we devise protocols that match the obtained bounds and thus, exactly characterize the classes of graphs in which Reliable Broadcast is possible. Among others, we show that Koo\u27s Certified Propagation Algorithm (CPA) is unique against locally bounded adversaries in ad hoc networks, that is, it can tolerate as many local corruptions as any other non-faulty algorithm; this settles an open question posed by Pelc and Peleg. We also provide an adaptation of CPA against general adversaries and show its uniqueness in this case too. To the best of our knowledge this is the first optimal algorithm for Reliable Broadcast in generic topology ad hoc networks against general adversaries

On the Resilience and Uniqueness of CPA for Secure Broadcast

We consider the Secure Broadcast problem in incomplete networks. We study the resilience of the Certified Propagation Algorithm (CPA), which is particularly suitable for ad hoc networks. We address the issue of determining the maximum number of corrupted players $t^{\mathrm{CPA}}_{\max}$ that CPA can tolerate under the $t$-locally bounded adversary model, in which the adversary may corrupt at most $t$ players in each player\u27s neighborhood. For any graph $G$ and dealer-node $D$ we provide upper and lower bounds on $t^{\mathrm{CPA}}_{\max}$ that can be efficiently computed in terms of a graph theoretic parameter that we introduce in this work. Along the way we obtain an efficient 2-approximation algorithm for $t^{\mathrm{CPA}}_{\max}$. We further introduce two more graph parameters, one of which matches $t^{\mathrm{CPA}}_{\max}$exactly. Our approach allows to provide an affirmative answer to the open problem of CPA Uniqueness posed by Pelc and Peleg in 2005

Delivery delay and mobile faults

In this work we address the problem of reaching approximate consensus in a complete network of n nodes, where message deliveries can be delayed by at most d time-steps. We consider a mobile adversary, which corrupts at most f nodes in any step, modeled as a synchronous round. We explicitly study how d affects the feasibility of the problem. More precisely, we propose a framework to analyze mobile fault-tolerance in the presence of message delays. We prove that approximate consensus is feasible if and only if n \u3e 4df. We assume no knowledge of time (round index) by the nodes; instead, in our model, whenever a message is sent, it is timestamped by the communication channel. We propose the tight TimeStamps algorithm, which utilizes timestamps to optimally bound the number of faulty messages