ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS)
The Byzantine Generals Problem
ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS)
Distributed Algorithms
Theoretical Computer Science - Applied semantics
Developing Topology Discovery in Event-B
IFM '09 Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Integrated Formal Methods
Coordinated Consensus Analysis of Multi-agent Systems Using Event-B
SEFM '09 Proceedings of the 2009 Seventh IEEE International Conference on Software Engineering and Formal Methods
Modeling in Event-B: System and Software Engineering
Modeling in Event-B: System and Software Engineering
Developing security protocols by refinement
Proceedings of the 17th ACM conference on Computer and communications security
An open extensible tool environment for event-b
ICFEM'06 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Formal Methods and Software Engineering
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Consensus problems arise in any area of computing where distributed processes must come to a joint decision. Although solutions to consensus problems have similar aims, they vary according to the processor faults and network properties that must be taken into account, and modifying these assumptions will lead to different algorithms. Reasoning about consensus protocols is subtle, and correctness proofs are often informal. This paper gives a fully formal development and proof of a known consensus algorithm using the stepwise refinement method Event-B. This allows us to manage the complexity of the proof process by factoring the proof of correctness into a number of refinement steps, and to carry out the proof task concurrently with the development. During the development the processor faults and network properties on which the development steps rely are identified. The research outlined here is motivated by the observation that making different choices at these points may lead to alternative algorithms and proofs, leading to a refinement tree of algorithms with partially shared proofs.