Readings
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A breakdown of supplementary readings per topic follows the session wise listing of reading assignments in the table below.
Unless otherwise noted, reading assignments are from the course text:
Lynch, Nancy A. Distributed Algorithms. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1997. ISBN: 1558603484.
| LEC # | TOPICS | READINGS |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Course Overview Synchronous Networks Leader Election in Synchronous Ring Networks |
Chapter 1, 2 (Skim) Chapter 3, sections 3.1 - 3.4 |
| 2 | Basic Computational Tasks in Synchronous Networks: Leader Election Breadth-first Search Shortest Paths Broadcast and Convergecast |
Chapter 3, sections 3.1 - 3.6 |
| 3 | Breadth-first Search (cont.) Shortest Paths (cont.) Broadcast and Convergecast (cont.) Spanning Trees Minimum Spanning Trees |
Chapter 4, sections 4.1 - 4.4 |
| 4 | Fault-tolerant Consensus Link Failures: The Two Generals Problem Process Failures (Stopping, Byzantine) Algorithms for Agreement with Stopping Failures |
Chapter 5, section 5.1 Chapter 6, sections 6.1, 6.2 Lamport, L., M. Pease, and R. Shostak. "The Albanian Generals Problem." Technical Report CSL-97, SRI International Computer Science Laboratory, August 22, 1979. |
| 5 | Exponential Information Gathering Algorithms for Agreement with Byzantine Failures |
Chapter 6, sections 6.2, 6.7 |
| 6 | Number-of-processes Lower Bounds for Byzantine Agreement Weak Byzantine Agreement Time Bounds for Consensus Problems |
Chapter 6, sections 6.3 - 6.6 Aguilera, Marcos Kawazoe, and Sam Toueg. "A simple bivalency proof that t-resilient consensus requires t+1 rounds." Information Processing Letters 71, no. 3-4 (August 1999): 155-158. |
| 7 | Other Kinds of Consensus Problems: $k$-agreement Approximate Agreement Distributed Commit |
Chapter 7, sections 7.1 - 7.3 (skip 7.3.4) |
| 8 | Asynchronous Distributed Computing Formal Modeling of Asynchronous Systems using I/O Automata |
Chapter 7, section 7.3 Chapter 8 |
| 9 | Proof Methods Non-fault-tolerant Algorithms for Asynchronous Networks Leader Election, Breadth-first Search, Shortest Paths, Broadcast and Convergecast |
Chapter 8, sections 8.2 - 8.5 Chapter 14 and 15 |
| 10 | Non-fault-tolerant Algorithms for Asynchronous Networks (cont.) Leader Election, Breadth-first Search, Shortest Paths, Broadcast and Convergecast (cont.) |
Chapter 15, sections 15.3 - 15.4 |
| 11 | Spanning Trees Gallager et al. Minimum Spanning Tree Algorithm |
Chapter 15, sections 15.4, 15.5 |
| 12 | Synchronizers | Chapter 16 |
| 13 | Synchronizer Applications Time, Clocks, and the Ordering of Events Vector Timestamps |
Chapter 16, section 16.6 Chapter 18 Lamport, Leslie. "Time, Clocks and the Ordering of Events in a Distributed System." Communications of the ACM 21, no. 7 (July 1978): 558-565. |
| 14 | State-machine Simulation Synchronous vs. Asynchronous Distributed Systems Stable Property Detection Distributed Termination Global Snapshots Deadlock Detection Asynchronous Shared-memory Systems |
Mattern, Friedemann. "Virtual time and global states of distributed systems." In Parallel and Distributed Algorithms: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms. Edited by Michel Cosnard et al. Gers, France: Chateau de Bonas, October 1988: pp. 215-226. North Holland, 1989. ISBN: 0444873678. (Reprinted in: Yang, Z., and T. A. Marsland, eds. "Global States and Time in Distributed Systems." IEEE (1994): 123-133.) Chapter 19 |
| 15 | Mutual Exclusion Mutual Exclusion Algorithms |
Chapter 9 Chapter 10, sections 10.1 - 10.5 |
| 16 | Mutual Exclusion Algorithms (cont.) | Chapter 10, sections 10.5 - 10.8 |
| 17 | Bounds on Shared-memory for Mutual Exclusion | Chapter 10, sections 10.8 - 10.9 Chapter 11 (Skim) |
| 18 | Impossibility of Consensus in Asynchronous, Fault-prone, Shared-memory Systems | Chapter 12 Chapter 13, section 13.1 |
| 19 | Atomic Objects Atomic Snapshot Algorithms |
Chapter 13 |
| 20 | Atomic Read/Write Register Algorithms Wait-free Computability The Wait-free Consensus Hierarchy |
Chapter 13 Herlihy, Maurice. "Wait-free synchronization." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 13, no. 1 (January 1991): 124-149. |
| 21 | The Wait-free Consensus Hierarchy (cont.) | Herlihy, Maurice. "Wait-free synchronization." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 13, no. 1 (January 1991): 124-149. Jayanti, Prasad. "Robust wait-free hierarchies." Journal of the ACM 44, no. 4 (1997): 592-614. (Skim) ———. "Wait-free computing." In Distributed Algorithms, 9th International Workshop, WDAG '95, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France, September 13-15, 1995, Proceedings. Edited by Jean-Michel Hélary, and Michel Raynal. Volume 972 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 1995. ISBN: 3540602747. |
| 22 | Wait-free vs. $f$-fault-tolerant Atomic Objects | Borowsky, Elizabeth, Eli Gafni, Nancy Lynch, and Sergio Rajsbaum. "The BG distributed simulation algorithm." Distributed Computing 14 (2001): 127-146. |
| 23 | Asynchronous Network Model vs. Asynchronous Shared-memory Model Impossibility of Consensus in Asynchronous Networks Failure Detectors and Consensus |
Chapter 17, 21 |
| 24 | Paxos Consensus Algorithm Reliable Communication using Unreliable Channels |
Lamport, L. "The part-time parliament." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 16, no. 2 (May 1998): 133-169. Also Research Report 49, Digital Equipment Corporation Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, September 1989. Chapter 22 |
| 25 | Reliable Communication using Unreliable Channels (cont.) Self-stabilizing Algorithms |
Chapter 22 Dijkstra's self-stabilization paper (PDF) Dolev, Shlomi. Self-Stabilization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, chapter 2. ISBN: 0262041782. |
| 26 | Atomic Memory Algorithms for Dynamic Networks Rambo |
Lynch, Nancy, and Alex Shvartsman. "Rambo: A reconfigurable atomic memory service for dynamic networks." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-856. MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, Cambridge, MA, 2002. Gilbert, Seth, Nancy Lynch, and Alex Shvartsman. "RAMBO II: Rapidly reconfigurable atomic memory for dynamic networks." Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) (June 22nd-25th, 2003): 259-268. San Francisco, CA. Also, Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-890, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, 2004. |
Supplementary Reading List
Other General Distributed Algorithms Textbooks
Attiya, Hagit, and Jennifer Welch. Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations, and Advanced Topics. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 2004. ISBN: 0471453242.
The Number of Rounds Required for Consensus
Aguilera, Marcos Kawazoe, and Sam Toueg. "A simple bivalency proof that t-resilient consensus requires t+1 rounds." Information Processing Letters 71, no. 3-4 (August 1999): 155-158.
Keidar, Idit, and Sergio Rajsbaum. "On the cost of fault-tolerant consensus when there are no faults - a tutorial." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-821 (May 2001). Preliminary version in: "Distributed Computing column." SIGACT News 32, no. 2 (June 2001): 45-63. (Published in May 15th.)
Minimum Spanning Tree Protocol
Gallager, R. G., P. A. Humblet, and P. M. Spira. "A distributed algorithm for minimum-weight spanning trees." ACM Trans Programming Language Syst 5 (1983): 66-77.
Vector TimeStamps
Mattern, Friedemann. "Virtual time and global states of distributed systems." In Parallel and Distributed Algorithms: Proceedings of the International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Algorithms. Edited by Michel Cosnard et al. Gers, France: Chateau de Bonas, October 1988: pp. 215-226. North Holland, 1989. ISBN: 0444873678. (Reprinted in: Yang, Z., and T. A. Marsland, eds. "Global States and Time in Distributed Systems." IEEE (1994): 123-133.)
Fidge, Colin. "Logical time in distributed computing systems." IEEE Computer 24, no. 8 (August 1991): 28-33.
Impossibility of Consensus
Fischer, Michael J., Nancy A. Lynch, and Michael S. Paterson. "Impossibility of Distributed Consensus with One Faulty Process." Journal of the ACM 32, no. 2 (April 1985): 374-382.
Chaudhuri, Soma. "More Choices Allow More Faults: Set Consensus Problems in Totally Asynchronous Systems." Information and Computation 105, no. 1 (July 1993): 132-158.
Wait-free Computability and the Wait-free Consensus Hierarchy
Herlihy, Maurice. "Wait-free synchronization." ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems 13, no. 1 (January 1991): 124-149.
Jayanti, Prasad. "Robust wait-free hierarchies." Journal of the ACM 44, no. 4 (1997): 592-614.
———. "Wait-free computing." In Distributed Algorithms, 9th International Workshop, WDAG '95, Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France, September 13-15, 1995, Proceedings. Edited by Jean-Michel Hélary, and Michel Raynal. Volume 972 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer 1995. ISBN: 3540602747.
Lo, Wai-Kau, and Vassos Hadzilacos. "All of us are smarter than any of us: nondeterministic wait-free hierarchies are not robust." SIAM Journal on Computing 30, no. 3 (2001): 689-728.
Wait-free vs. f-fault-tolerant Data Objects
Chandra, T. D., V. Hadzilacos, P. Jayanti, and S. Toueg. "Wait-freedom vs. t-resiliency and the robustness of the hrm hierarchy." Proceedings of the 13th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. Los Angeles, CA, August 1994, pp. 334-343,
———. "Generalized irreducibility of consensus and the equivalence of t-resilient and wait-free implementations of consensus." To appear in SIAM Journal on Computing.
Borowsky, Elizabeth, Eli Gafni, Nancy Lynch, and Sergio Rajsbaum. "The BG distributed simulation algorithm." Distributed Computing 14 (2001): 127-146.
Lo, W. K., and V. Hadzilacos. "On the power of shared object types to implement one-resilient consensus." Distributed Computing 13, no. 4 (2000): 219-238.
Attie, Paul, Rachid Guerraoui, Petr Kouznetsov, Nancy Lynch, and Sergio Rajsbaum. "Impossibility of boosting distributed service resilience." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-982, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, February 2005.
Reliable Broadcast
Hadzilacos, Vassos, and Sam Toueg. "Fault-tolerant broadcasts and related problems." In Distributed Systems. 2nd ed. Edited by Sape Mullender. Reading, MA: ACM Press and Addison-Wesley, 1993, chapter 5, pp. 97-145. ISBN: 0201624273.
———. "A modular approach to the specification and implementation of fault-tolerant broadcasts." Technical Report TR94-1425. Ithaca NY: Cornell University, Department of Computer Science, May 1994.
Failure Detectors and Consensus
Chandra, Tushar Deepak, and Sam Toueg. "Unreliable failure detectors for reliable distributed systems." Journal of the ACM 43, no. 2 (March 1996): 225-267.
Chandra, Tushar Deepak, Vassos Hadzilacos, and Sam Toueg. "The weakest failure detector for solving consensus." Journal of the ACM 43, no. 4 (July 1996): 685-722.
Gafni, Eli. "A Round-by-Round Failure Detector - Unifying Synchrony and Asynchrony." Proceedings of the 17th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing. Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, June 1998, pp. 143-152.
Lamport, L. "The part-time parliament." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems 16, no. 2 (May 1998): 133-169. Also Research Report 49, Digital Equipment Corporation Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, CA, September 1989.
Self-stabilization
Dijkstra, Edsger W. "Self-stabilizing systems in spite of distributed control." Communications of the ACM 17, no. 11 (November 1974): 643-644.
Dolev, Shlomi. Self-Stabilization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000. ISBN: 0262041782.
Clock Synchronization
Attiya, Hagit, and Jennifer Welch. Distributed Computing: Fundamentals, Simulations, and Advanced Topics. New York, NY: Wiley-Interscience, 2004. ISBN: 0471453242.
Fan, Rui, and Nancy Lynch. "Gradient Clock Synchronization." Proceedings of the Twenty-third Annual ACM PODC. St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada, July 2004.
Dynamic Distributed Algorithms
Lynch, Nancy, and Alex Shvartsman. "Rambo: A reconfigurable atomic memory service for dynamic networks." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-856. Cambridge, MA: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, 2002.
Gilbert, Seth, Nancy Lynch, and Alex Shvartsman. "RAMBO II: Rapidly reconfigurable atomic memory for dynamic networks." Proceedings of the International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) (June 22nd-25th, 2003): 259-268. San Francisco, CA. Also, Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-890, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, 2004.
Dolev, Shlomi, Seth Gilbert, Nancy Lynch, Alex Shvartsman, and Jennifer Welch. "GeoQuorums: Implementing atomic memory in ad hoc networks." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-900a, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, 2004.
Dolev, Shlomi, Seth Gilbert, Nancy A. Lynch, Elad Schiller, Alex A. Shvartsman, and Jennifer L. Welch. "Virtual Mobile Nodes for Mobile Ad hoc Networks." Proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Distributed Computing (DISC), October 2004.
Dolev, Shlomi, Seth Gilbert, Limor Lahiani, Nancy Lynch, and Tina Nolte. "Timed Virtual Stationary Automata for Mobile Networks." Technical Report MIT-LCS-TR-979a, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, August 2005.
Aspnes, James, Dana Angluin, Zoe Diamadi, Michael J. Fischer, and Rene Peralta. "Computation in networks of passively mobile finite-state sensors." Proceedings of the Twenty-Third ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, July 2004, pp. 290-299. Accepted to Distributed Computing (PODC 2004 special issue), September 2004. Last revised May 2005.
