[p2p-hackers] Byzantine Quorum Systems

[Brad Neuberg]

At 12:30 PM 2/22/2005, you wrote:
>Brad Neuberg wrote:
>
>>My understanding of byzantine quorum algorithms are that they break down 
>>under the kinds of conditions found in large-scale, P2P systems, which 
>>have very high node churn and high latency, described above.  They seem 
>>to be focused on very stable or LAN type networks.  Is this a correct 
>>assumption?  If it is, it seems that byzantine quorum algorithms need to 
>>be refocused on the kinds of networks that we are dealing with today, 
>>rather than LAN centric networks or networks of very stable servers on 
>>the public Internet.
>
>OceanStore solves this problem by using a byzantine quorum protocol only 
>between supernodes. IIRC, performance of this protocol over the Internet 
>was not too bad. Unfortunately, I didn't understand Nick's recent messages 
>(and thus the context for this discussion) at all, so I don't know if this 
>is relevant.

I should provide more context.  I'm reading the following two papers by Nick:

* "Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority" - 
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/securetitle.html
* "Advances in Distributed Security" - 
http://szabo.best.vwh.net/distributed.html

Both posit that greater advances in things like distributed naming over p2p 
networks are possible due to things like byzantine quorum systems.  I've 
always felt that byzantine quorum systems are too fragile for unreliable 
p2p networks on the wider Internet, though I'd love to be proven wrong.

Brad


>Wes Felter - wesley at felter.org
>
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Brad Neuberg, bkn3 at columbia.edu
Senior Software Engineer, Rojo Networks
Weblog: http://www.codinginparadise.org

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