CSR---PDOS: Byzantine faults in a rational world

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop the theory and practice for constructing Byzantine and Rational Fault Tolerant (BRFT) distributed systems. A BRFT system operates properly upon a collection of rational nodes that can arbitrarily deviate from any suggested protocol in order to maximize their own net benefits, and it also tolerates a small number of Byzantine nodes that can arbitrarily deviate from any suggested protocol for any reason including malfunction, misconfiguration, or malice. BRFT is intended to model cooperative systems and applications that span multiple administrative domains---examples include Internet routing, wireless mesh routing, file distribution in P2P networks, archival storage, or cooperative backup. Currently there exists no satisfactory way to model systems such as these, where, absent a central authority, the classical dichotomy between correct and faulty nodes becomes inadequate: all nodes, not just the faulty ones, may depart from the suggested protocol.