Total order broadcast: an exploration of the role of synchrony on performance of Paxos

• Grant number: 11/23705-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate (Direct)
• Start date: March 01, 2012
• End date: February 29, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Physical Sciences and Mathematics - Computer Science - Computer Systems
• Principal Investigator: Luiz Eduardo Buzato
• Grantee: Daniel Cason
• Host Institution: Instituto de Computação (IC). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated scholarship(s): 13/21651-0 - An exploration of the role of synchrony on the performance of Paxos, BE.EP.DD

Abstract

Total order broadcast and consensus are at the core of any solution for the problem of creating highly available distributed applications from off-the-shelve components based on active replication. More specifically, in asynchronous computation systems which processes can fail these two problems are equivalent: we use consensus instances to determine the ordered sequence of messages that should be delivered to the processes. Paxos is an optimal consensus algorithm devised for the asynchronous crash-recovery computing model augmented with unreliable failure detectors. By using it to generate an ordering for the broadcasted messages, Paxos guarantees that no replica state is going to diverge from each other despite failures and the asynchronicity of processes and communication channels. In this project, we are interested in exploring the behaviour of Paxos within the alternative framework provided by partially synchronous computing models, more specifically the timed asynchronous computing model. In this context, our research should be able to answer, both theoretically and experimentally, whether it is possible or not to devise a variation of Paxos to this computation environment, that takes advantage of its synchrony to achieve a better performance, but still providing the same guarantees of the original algorithm. (AU)

Scientific publications

(References retrieved automatically from Web of Science and SciELO through information on FAPESP grants and their corresponding numbers as mentioned in the publications by the authors)

CASON, DANIEL; BUZATO, LUIZ E.. Time hybrid total order broadcast: Exploiting the inherent synchrony of broadcast networks. JOURNAL OF PARALLEL AND DISTRIBUTED COMPUTING, v. 77, p. 26-40, MAR 2015. (10/14555-6, 11/23705-4)

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

CASON, Daniel. O papel da sincronia no desempenho de Paxos. 2017. Doctoral Thesis - Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Computação Campinas, SP.