Fault Tolerant Active Rings for Structured Peer-to-Peer Overlays

Algorithms by which peers join and leave structured overlay networks can be classified as passive or active. Passive topology maintenance relies on periodic background repair of neighbor pointers. When a node passively leaves the overlay, subsequent lookups may fail silently. Active maintenance has been proven only for fault-free networks. We develop an active topology maintenance algorithm for practical, fault-prone networks. Unlike prior work, it a) maintains ring continuity during normal topology changes and b) guarantees consistency and progress in the presence of faults. The latter property is inherited by novel extension of the Paxos commit algorithm. The topology maintenance algorithm is formally developed using the B method and its event-driven extensions for dynamic systems. Messaging and storage overheads are quantified