Computing network coordinates in the presence of Byzantine faults

Abstract

Network coordinate systems allow for efficient construction of large-scale distributed systems on the Internet. Coordinates provide locality information in a compact way, without requiring each node to contact every potential neighbor; distances between two nodes' coordinates represent estimates of the network latency between them. Past work on network coordinates has assumed that all nodes in the system behave correctly. The techniques in these systems do not behave well when nodes are Byzantine. These Byzantine failures, wherein a faulty node can behave arbitrarily, can make the coordinate-based distance estimates meaningless. For example, a Byzantine node can delay responding to some other node, thus distorting that node's computation of its own location. We present a network coordinate system based on landmarks, reference nodes that are used for measurements, some of which may be Byzantine faulty. It scales linearly in the number of clients computing their coordinates and does not require excessive network traffic to allow clients to do so. Our results show that our system is able to compute accurate coordinates even when some landmarks are exhibiting Byzantine faults.