A Byzantine-Fault Tolerant Self-stabilizing Protocol for Distributed Clock Synchronization Systems

Malekpour, Mahyar R.

doi:10.1007/978-3-540-49823-0_29

Cited by 25 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…The assumption of an absence of faults is equivalent to the assumption that all faults are detectable. This departure from our previous work at the Byzantine extreme of the fault spectrum [5] is in part because of the niche use and the extra cost associated with the Byzantine faults. Also, using authentication and error detection techniques, it is possible to substantially reduce the effects of variety of faults in the system.…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Model checking a self-stabilizing synchronization protocol for arbitrary digraphs

Malekpour

2012

2012 IEEE/AIAA 31st Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

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This report presents the mechanical verification of a self-stabilizing distributed clock synchronization protocol for arbitrary digraphs in the absence of faults. This protocol does not rely on assumptions about the initial state of the system, other than the presence of at least one node, and no central clock or a centrally generated signal, pulse, or message is used. The system under study is an arbitrary, nonpartitioned digraph ranging from fully connected to 1-connected networks of nodes while allowing for differences in the network elements. Nodes are anonymous, i.e., they do not have unique identities. There is no theoretical limit on the maximum number of participating nodes. The only constraint on the behavior of the node is that the interactions with other nodes are restricted to defined links and interfaces. This protocol deterministically converges within a time bound that is a linear function of the self-stabilization period. A bounded model of the protocol is verified using the Symbolic Model Verifier (SMV) for a subset of digraphs. Modeling challenges of the protocol and the system are addressed. The model checking effort is focused on verifying correctness of the bounded model of the protocol as well as confirmation of claims of determinism and linear convergence with respect to the self-stabilization period.

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Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 65%

Model checking a self-stabilizing synchronization protocol for arbitrary digraphs

Malekpour

2012

2012 IEEE/AIAA 31st Digital Avionics Systems Conference (DASC)

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“…Translating existing solutions [13]- [16] to our setting would (i) also require the availability of synchronized (few-bit) clocks in order to transmit larger messages over B-bit channels, and (ii) result in (expected) stabilization times that grow fast in terms of the system size, i.e., at least quadratic in n. Furthermore, except for the randomized algorithm from [14] (with stabilization time exponential in n), the complexity of local computations would entail a large gate and area consumption. The approach described in [17] does not suffer from a large stabilization time, but relies on very specific assumptions on the system's behavior and is not applicable for f > 1 [18]. Moreover, to establish clocks (instead of anonymous pulses), it relies on consensus, implying that again (i) applies.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Efficient Construction of Global Time in SoCs Despite Arbitrary Faults

Lenzen

Függer

Hofstatter

et al. 2013

2013 Euromicro Conference on Digital System Design

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Abstract-In this paper, we show how to build synchronized clocks of arbitrary size atop of existing small-sized clocks, despite arbitrary faults. Our solution is both self-stabilizing and Byzantine fault-tolerant, and needs merely single-bit channels. It involves a reduction to Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus, which allows different consensus algorithms to be plugged in for matching the actual clock sizes and resilience requirements best. We demonstrate the practicability of our approach by means of an FPGA implementation and its experimental evaluation. To also address the cases where deterministic algorithms hit fundamental limits, we provide a novel randomized self-stabilizing Byzantine consensus algorithm that works very well also in these settings, along with its correctness proof and stabilization time analysis.

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“…This is true both in work studying specific protocols, as [27,26], which model-check protocols for the case of four processes; as well as in work describing a general methodology, as [6], which studies synthesis of distributed systems with a bounded number of processes.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The error has been detected using the model checker SMV for the case n = 4. Likewise, a corrected version of the protocol has been proven correct in SMV for the case n = 4 [26]. While these works clearly demonstrate the necessity and effectiveness of model checking, there is no general methodology for reasoning about fault-tolerant protocols.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

On Verifying Fault Tolerance of Distributed Protocols

Fisman

Kupferman

Lustig

Tools and Algorithms for the Construction and Analysis of Systems

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Abstract. Distributed systems are composed of processes connected in some network. Distributed systems may suffer from faults: processes may stop, be interrupted, or be maliciously attacked. Fault-tolerant protocols are designed to be resistant to faults. Proving the resistance of protocols to faults is a very challenging problem, as it combines the parameterized setting that distributed systems are based-on, with the need to consider a hostile environment that produces the faults. Considering all the possible fault scenarios for a protocol is very difficult. Thus, reasoning about fault-tolerance protocols utterly needs formal methods.In this paper we describe a framework for verifying the fault tolerance of (synchronous or asynchronous) distributed protocols. In addition to the description of the protocol and the desired behavior, the user provides the fault type (e.g., failstop, Byzantine) and its distribution (e.g., at most half of the processes are faulty). Our framework is based on augmenting the description of the configurations of the system by a mask describing which processes are faulty. We focus on regular model checking and show how it is possible to compile the input for the model-checking problem to one that takes the faults and their distribution into an account, and perform regular model-checking on the compiled input. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our framework and argue for its generality.

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A Byzantine-Fault Tolerant Self-stabilizing Protocol for Distributed Clock Synchronization Systems

Cited by 25 publications

References 13 publications

Model checking a self-stabilizing synchronization protocol for arbitrary digraphs

Model checking a self-stabilizing synchronization protocol for arbitrary digraphs

Efficient Construction of Global Time in SoCs Despite Arbitrary Faults

On Verifying Fault Tolerance of Distributed Protocols

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