Stabilizing Communication Protocols
IEEE Transactions on Computers - Special issue on protocol engineering
ACM Computing Surveys (CSUR)
Self-stabilizing unidirectional network algorithms by power-supply
SODA '97 Proceedings of the eighth annual ACM-SIAM symposium on Discrete algorithms
Self-Stabilizing Mutual Exclusion in the Presence of Faulty Nodes
FTCS '95 Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing
Self-stabilization over unreliable communication media
Distributed Computing - Special issue: Self-stabilization
A self-adjusting algorithm for byzantine agreement
Distributed Computing
| Hi-index | 0.00 |
A stablizing system is one which if started at an arbitrary state is guaranteed to reach a state after which it cannot deviate from its intended specification. In this paper, we propose a new variation of this notion, called pseudo-stabilization. A pseudo-stabilizing system is one which if started at an arbitrary state is guaranteed to reach a state after which it does not deviate from its intended specification. Thus, the difference between the two notions comes down to the difference between cannot and does not - a difference that hardly matters in many practical situations. As it happens, a number of well-known systems, for example the alternating-bit protocol, are pseudo-stabilizing but not stabilizing. We conclude that one should not try to make any such system stabilizing, especially if stabilization comes at a high price.