Abstract
We consider networks of finite-state machines which communicate over reliable channels which may reorder messages. Each machine in the network also has a local input tape. Since channels are unbounded, the network as a whole is, in general, infinite-state.
An asynchronous protocol is a network equipped with an acceptance condition. Such a protocol is said to be robust if it never deadlocks and, moreover, it either accepts or rejects each input in an unambiguous manner. The behaviour of a robust protocol is insensitive to nondeterminism introduced by either message reordering or the relative speeds at which components read their local inputs.
Using an automata-theoretic model, we show that, at a global level, every robust asynchronous protocol has a finite-state representation. To prove this, we establish a variety of pumping lemmas. We also demonstrate a distributed language which does not admit a robust protocol.
Partly supported by IFCPAR Project 1502-1.
Currently on leave at Department of Computer Science, State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY 11794-4400, USA. E-mail: kumar@cs.sunysb.edu.
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© 1998 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Mukund, M., Kumar, K.N., Radhakrishnan, J., Sohoni, M. (1998). Robust asynchronous protocols are finite-state. In: Larsen, K.G., Skyum, S., Winskel, G. (eds) Automata, Languages and Programming. ICALP 1998. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1443. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055052
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0055052
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