The paper entitled “The Synchronization Power (Consensus Number) of Access-Control Objects: the Case of AllowList and DenyList” has been accepted at DISC 2023, the International Symposium on Distributed Computing, one of the premier venues on the theory of distributed systems.
The paper, authored by Davide Frey, Mathieu Gestin, and Michel Raynal (all members of the WIDE Inria team) studies the consensus number of two distributed objects: the allowlist and the denylist objects.
The result of this study is that the consensus number of the allowlist object is 1. In other words, it is not necessary to reach a consensus to implement it; a simpler, more efficient reliable broadcast algorithm is enough. However, the consensus number of the denylist is k, where k is a subset of the processes of the system. Hence, for a specific operation of this object, processes need to reach a consensus. This study may improve the efficiency of algorithms that implement allowlist and denylist objects.
The manuscript can be viewed here: https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.DISC.2023.21
Congratulations to the authors.
