Byzantine agreement in the presence of mixed faults on processors and links

Abstract

In early stage, the Byzantine agreement (BA) problem was studied with single faults on processors in either a fully connected network or a nonfully connected network. Subsequently, the single fault assumption was extended to mixed faults (also referred to as hybrid fault model) on processors. For the case of both processor and link failures, the problem has been examined in a fully connected network with a single faulty type, namely an arbitrary fault. To release the limitations of a fully connected network and a single faulty type, the problem is reconsidered in a general network. The processors and links in such a network can both be subjected to different types of fault simultaneously. The proposed protocol uses the minimum number of message exchanges and can tolerate the maximum number of allowable faulty components to make each fault-free processor reach an agreement.