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International Symposium on Formal Techniques in Real-Time and Fault-Tolerant Systems

FTRTFT 1992: Formal Techniques in Real-Time and Fault-Tolerant Systems pp 217–236Cite as

Mechanical verification of a generalized protocol for Byzantine fault tolerant clock synchronization

  • Session 4A
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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 571))

Abstract

Schneider [Sch87] generalizes a number of protocols for Byzantine fault-tolerant clock synchronization and presents a uniform proof for their correctness. We present a mechanical verification of Schneider's protocol leading to several significant clarifications and revisions. The verification was carried out with the Ehdm system [RvHO91] developed at the SRI Computer Science Laboratory. The mechanically checked proofs include the verification that the egocentric mean function used in Lamport and Melliar-Smith's Interactive Convergence Algorithm [LMS85] satisfies the requirements of Schneider's protocol. Our mechanical verification raises a number of issues regarding the verification of fault-tolerant, distributed, real-time protocols that are germane to the design of a special-purpose logic for such problems.

This work was supported by NASA Contract NAS1-18226. John Rushby, Friedrich von Henke, Fred Schneider, and Rick Butler provided considerable guidance and encouragement. I also thank Paul Miner (NASA Langley Research Center) and the referees for their comments and clarifications.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Computer Science Laboratory, SRI International, 94025, Menlo Park, CA, USA

    Natarajan Shankar

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  1. Natarajan Shankar
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Jan Vytopil

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Shankar, N. (1991). Mechanical verification of a generalized protocol for Byzantine fault tolerant clock synchronization. In: Vytopil, J. (eds) Formal Techniques in Real-Time and Fault-Tolerant Systems. FTRTFT 1992. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 571. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55092-5_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-55092-5_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-55092-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46692-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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