Randomized Binary Consensus with Faulty Agents

Abstract

This paper investigates self-organizing binary majority consensus disturbed by faulty nodes with random and persistent failure. We study consensus in ordered and random networks with noise, message loss and delays. Using computer simulations, we show that: (1) explicit randomization by noise, message loss and topology can increase robustness towards faulty nodes; (2) commonly-used faulty nodes with random failure inhibit consensus less than faulty nodes with persistent failure; and (3) in some cases, such randomly failing faulty nodes can even promote agreement.

Keywords

• binary consensus
• randomized consensus
• self-organizing systems
• faulty agents
• Byzantine failure
• density classification