Multicoordinated agreement for groups of agents

Agents in agreement protocols play well distinct roles. Proposers propose values to the acceptors, which will accept proposals and inform the learners so they detect that an agreement has been reached. A fourth role is that of the coordinator, who filters the proposals from proposers to acceptors. While proposers, learners, and coordinators are easily replaced, substituting an acceptor is prohibitive. Protocols that do not employ a coordinator are less resilient to acceptor failures. Protocols that use one coordinator are more resilient to acceptor failures, at the expense of one extra communication step even in the absence of failures. Moreover, they require replacing the coordinator as soon as it fails, a reconfiguration that, although relatively inexpensive, diminishes the protocol availability. Hence, either option, i.e, one or zero coordinator, has its drawbacks. In previous works, we have presented an alternative: multicoordinated agreement protocols. Such protocols are as resil...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: JBCS
• Authors: Lásaro J. Camargos, Rodrigo Schmidt, Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira, Fernando Pedone
• Keywords: Agreement Protocol, JBCS 2010, Multicoordinated Agreement Protocol, Resilient