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IMPOSSIBILITY OF DISTRIBUTED CONSENSUS WITH ONE FAULTY PROCESSSeptember 1982
1982 Technical Report
Publisher:
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • 201 Vassar Street, W59-200 Cambridge, MA
  • United States
Published:01 September 1982
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Abstract

The consensus problem involves an asynchronous system of processes, some of which may be unreliable. The problem is for the reliable processes to agree on a binary value. We show that every protocol for this problem has the possibility of nontermination, even with only one faulty process. By way of contrast, solutions are known for the synchronous case, the "Byzantine Generals" problem.

Contributors
  • Yale University
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • University of Warwick

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