A generic theoretical framework for modeling gossip-based algorithms

Abstract

During the past 30 years of the Internet revolution, the Internet has become a major force of change with an enormous effect on civilization. Consequently, computer networks have evolved into more complex system and become virtually ubiquitous. This in turn, has given raise to a growing demand for scalable and reliable computer system architectures. Thus far, there has been enormous effort by the research community to introduce decentralized, simple, and scalable distributed systems to solve a wide range of problems. In this paper we explore one promising solution, which was initially inspired by mathematical models that investigate two everyday life phenomena, epidemics and gossip, which we used interchangeably throughout the paper. During the last century, mathematicians developed models to predict the rate of diseases spread, namely epidemics, using differential equations. In addition, researches developed discrete mathematics models to predict what we already know; rumors spread fast, namely gossip. It was thus natural to harness these models in order to design distributed systems that mimic the basic behavior of such fast spreading everyday life paradigms.