Distributed agreement in the presence of processor and communication faults

Abstract

A model of distributed computation is proposed in which processes may fail by not sending or receiving the message specified by a protocol. The solution to the Byzantine generals problem for this model is presented. The algorithm exhibits early stopping under conditions of less than maximum failure and is as efficient as the algorithm developed for the more restrictive crash-fault model in terms of time, message, and bit complexity. The authors show extant models to underestimate resiliency when faults in the communication medium are considered; the model outlined here is more accurate in this regard.