Reasoning About Uncertainty in Fault-Tolerant Distributed Systems. Revision.

Abstract

A temporal logic is presented for reasoning about uncertainty in distributed systems that contain both probabilistic and nondeterministic transitions. Probabilistic transitions model randomness in the processes of the system and in the fault model. Nondeterministic transitions model lack of information about the true faulty behavior of the system and the progress of the computation. The naturalness of this approach is demonstrated by offering new analyses and solutions to some classic fault-tolerant distributed computing problems, namely the coordinated attack problem and authenticated Byzantine agreement problem. Keywords: Safety properties, Knowledge, Belief, Distributed systems, Nondeterministic systems, Probabilistic system, Liveness, Byzantine agreement, Coordinated attack. (jhd)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Aug 01, 1988
Accession Number
ADA199208

Entities

People

  • Lenore D. Zuck
  • Michael J. Fischer

Organizations

  • Yale University

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Agreements
  • Computations
  • Distributed Computing
  • Reasoning
  • Transitions
  • Uncertainty

Fields of Study

  • Computer science

Readers

  • Applied Combinatorial Optimization and Logic Circuit Design.
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Mathematical Modeling and Probability Theory.