Using Conditions to Expedite Consensus in Synchronous Distributed Systems

The condition-based approach to solve consensus has initially been developed in the context of asynchronous systems. It identifies a class of acceptable conditions on the set of input vectors that, when satisfied by the actual input vector, are exactly the conditions that allow to solve consensus despite up to t faulty processes. This paper investigates the use of conditions to solve consensus in synchronous systems prone to process crash failures. It first shows that for any acceptable condition there is a condition-based protocol solving uniform consensus that enjoys the following property: when the input vector belongs to the condition, it terminates in a single round if no process crashes, and in two rounds otherwise. When the input vector does not belong to the condition, the actual number of rounds is upper bounded by t+1 (it actually depends on both the crash pattern and the input vector). The paper then extends the previous protocol to combine early decision with the condition-based approach. It presents a general protocol that enjoys the previous properties (decision in one or two rounds) when the input vector belongs to the condition and terminates in at most (t + 1, f + 2) rounds when the input vector does not belong to the condition (where f is the actual number of faulty processes). Finally, the paper presents corresponding matching lower bounds. It shows that acceptable conditions are the only ones for which a consensus protocol can enjoy the previous properties.