Implementability of Global Distributed Protocols modulo Network Architectures

2026-02-10

AI Summary

This study addresses the realizability of global distributed protocols under asynchronous network architectures—specifically, whether local implementations can satisfy global specifications. To this end, the work introduces a network-parameterized coherence condition, combined with operational axioms that characterize message buffering behavior, enabling a unified formal model of five prominent asynchronous network paradigms. Leveraging symbolic algorithms and formal verification techniques, the paper establishes—for the first time—a systematic relationship between network architecture parameters and protocol realizability, and derives optimal complexity bounds. The accompanying tool, Sprout(A), is the first realizability verifier supporting multiple network architectures, achieving both high performance and modularity without sacrificing generality.

Technology Category

• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Distributed Search

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Algorithms and analysis for incomplete, noisy, or partially observed Web-related graphs
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Global protocols specify distributed, message-passing protocols from a birds-eye view, and are used as a specification for synthesizing local implementations. Implementability asks whether a given global protocol admits a distributed implementation. We present the first comprehensive investigation of global protocol implementability modulo network architectures. We propose a set of network-parametric Coherence Conditions, and exhibit sufficient assumptions under which it precisely characterizes implementability. We further reduce these assumptions to a minimal set of operational axioms describing insert and remove behavior of individual message buffers. Our reduction immediately establishes that five commonly studied asynchronous network architectures, namely peer-to-peer FIFO, mailbox, senderbox, monobox and bag, are instances of our network-parametric result. We use our characterization to derive optimal complexity results for implementability modulo networks, relationships between classes of implementable global protocols, and symbolic algorithms for deciding implementability modulo networks. We implement the latter in the first network-parametric tool Sprout(A), and show that it achieves network generality without sacrificing performance and modularity.

Problem

• implementability
• global protocols
• network architectures
• distributed protocols
• message-passing

Innovation

• global protocols
• implementability
• network architectures
• coherence conditions
• symbolic algorithms