Protocols and Impossibility Results for Gossip-Based Communication Mechanisms

In recent years, gossip-based algorithms have gained prominence as a methodology for designing robust and scalable communication schemes in large distributed systems. The premise underlying distributed gossip is very simple: in each time step, each node v in the system selects some other node w as a communication partner — generally by a simple randomized rule — and exchanges information with w; over a period of time, information spreads through the system in an “epidemic fashion”. A fundamental issue which is not well understood is the following: how does the underlying low-level gossip mechanism — the means by which communication partners are chosen — affect one’s ability to design ef£cient high-level gossip-based protocols? We establish one of the £rst concrete results addressing this question, by showing a fundamental limitation on the power of the commonly used uniform gossip mechanism for solving nearest-resource location problems. In contrast, very ef£cient pro...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2002
• Where: FOCS
• Authors: David Kempe, Jon M. Kleinberg
• Keywords: Communication Partners, FOCS 2002, Gossip Mechanisms, Theoretical Computer Science, Uniform Gossip