Byzantine Generals

In fault-tolerant computer systems, and in particular distributed computing systems, Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) is the characteristic of a system that tolerates the class of failures known as the Byzantine Generals' Problem, which is a generalized version of the Two Generals' Problem – for which there is an unsolvability proof. The phrases interactive consistency or source congruency have been used to refer to Byzantine fault tolerance, particularly among the members of some early implementation teams. It is also referred to as error avalanche, Byzantine agreement problem, Byzantine generals problem and Byzantine failure.

Byzantine failures are considered the most general and most difficult class of failures among the failure modes. So called fail-stop failure mode occupies the simplest end of the spectrum. Whereas fail-stop failure model simply means that the only way to fail is a node crash, detected by other nodes, Byzantine failures imply no restrictions, which means that failed node can generate arbitrary data, pretending to be a correct one, which makes fault tolerance difficult.

A Byzantine fault is any fault presenting different symptoms to different observers. A Byzantine failure is the loss of a system service due to a Byzantine fault in systems that require consensus.

The objective of Byzantine fault tolerance is to be able to defend against Byzantine failures, in which components of a system fail with symptoms that prevent some components of the system from reaching agreement among themselves, where such agreement is needed for the correct operation of the system. Correctly functioning components of a Byzantine fault tolerant system will be able to provide the system's service, assuming there are not too many faulty components.

Byzantine refers to the Byzantine Generals' Problem, an agreement problem (described by Leslie Lamport, Robert Shostak and Marshall Pease in their 1982 paper, "The Byzantine Generals Problem") in which a group of generals, each commanding a portion of the Byzantine army, encircle a city. These generals wish to formulate a plan for attacking the city. In its simplest form, the generals must only decide whether to attack or retreat. Some generals may prefer to attack, while others prefer to retreat. The important thing is that every general agrees on a common decision, for a halfhearted attack by a few generals would become a rout and be worse than a coordinated attack or a coordinated retreat.

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