A synchronous communication system for a software-based Byzantine fault tolerant computer

This thesis describes the redesign of a Byzantine-resilient, quad-redundant computer to remove proprietary hardware components. The basic architecture consists of four Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) processors in a completely-connected network of point-to-point ethernet connections. In particular, the focus of this thesis is an algorithm that combines clock synchronization and communications between fault containment regions by inferring relative clock skew from the arrival time of expected messages. Both a failsafe and a fault-tolerant algorithm are discussed, though the fault-tolerant algorithm is not fully analyzed. The performance of a prototype and the failsafe synchronization algorithm are discussed.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Sterling, Reuben Marbell

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Roger Racine.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41226

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/41226