Coordinated consensus in dynamic networks

We study several variants of coordinated consensus in dynamic networks. We assume a synchronous model, where the communication graph for each round is chosen by a worst-case adversary. The network topology is always connected, but can change completely from one round to the next. The model captures mobile and wireless networks, where communication can be unpredictable. In this setting we study the fundamental problems of eventual, simultaneous, and ∆-coordinated consensus, as well as their relationship to other distributed problems, such as determining the size of the network. We show that in the absence of a good initial upper bound on the size of the network, eventual consensus is as hard as computing deterministic functions of the input, e.g., the minimum or maximum of inputs to the nodes. We also give an algorithm for computing such functions that is optimal in every execution. Next, we show that simultaneous consensus can never be achieved in less than n − 1 rounds in any exe...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2011
• Where: PODC
• Authors: Fabian Kuhn, Rotem Oshman, Yoram Moses
• Keywords: Communication Graph, Distributed And Parallel Computing, Dynamic Graph, Mobile And Wireless Networks, PODC 2011