Efficient practical Byzantine consensus using random linear network coding

Abstract

Using random linear network coding (RLNC) in asynchronous networks with one-to-many information flow has already been proven to be a valid approach to maximize the channel capacities. Message-based consensus protocols such as practical Byzantine fault tolerance (pBFT) adhere partially to said scenario. Protocol phases with many-to-many communication, however, still suffer from quadratic growth in the number of required transmissions to reach consensus. We show that an enhancement in the data transmission behavior in the quadratic phases is possible through combining RLNC with pBFT as one hybrid protocol. We present several experiments conducted on random network topologies. We conclude that using RLNC-based data transmission offers a significantly better performance under specific circumstances, which depend on the number of participating network nodes and the chosen coding parameters. Applying the same approach to other combinations of message-based consensus and network coding protocols promises not only a gain in performance, but may also improve robustness and security and open up new application scenarios for RLNC, e.g., running it on the application layer.