An Eventually Perfect Failure Detector for Networks of Arbitrary Topology Connected with ADD Channels Using Time-To-Live Values

Abstract

We present an implementation of an eventually perfect failure detector in an arbitrarily connected, partitionable network. We assume ADD channels: for each one there exist constants [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text], not known to the processes, such that for every [Formula: see text] consecutive messages sent in one direction, at least one is delivered within time [Formula: see text]. The best previous implementation used messages of bounded size, but exponential in [Formula: see text], the number of nodes. The main contribution of this paper is a novel use of time-to-live values in the design of failure detectors, obtaining a flexible implementation that uses messages of size [Formula: see text].