Troxy: Transparent Access to Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Systems

Li B, Weichbrodt N, Behl J, Aublin PL, Distler T, Kapitza R (2018)

Publication Type: Conference contribution

Publication year: 2018

Publisher: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Edited Volumes: Proceedings - 48th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, DSN 2018

Pages Range: 59-70

Conference Proceedings Title: Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '18)

Event location: Luxembourg City, Luxembourg

ISBN: 9781538655955

URI: https://www4.cs.fau.de/Publications/2018/li_18_dsn.pdf

DOI: 10.1109/DSN.2018.00019

Abstract

Various protocols and architectures have been proposed to make Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) increasingly practical. However, the deployment of such systems requires dedicated client-side functionality. This is necessary as clients have to connect to multiple replicas and perform majority voting over the received replies to outvote faulty responses. Deploying custom client-side code is cumbersome, and often not an option, especially in open heterogeneous systems and for well-established protocols (e.g., HTTP and IMAP) where diverse client-side implementations co-exist. We propose Troxy, a system which relocates the BFT-specific client-side functionality to the server side, thereby making BFT transparent to legacy clients. To achieve this, Troxy relies on a trusted subsystem built upon hardware protection enabled by Intel SGX. Additionally, Troxy reduces the replication cost of BFT for read-heavy workloads by offering an actively maintained cache that supports trustworthy read operations while preserving the consistency guarantees offered by the underlying BFT protocol. A prototype of Troxy has been built and evaluated, and results indicate that using Troxy (1) leads to at most 43% performance loss with small ordered messages in a local network environment, while (2) improves throughput by 130% with read-heavy workloads in a simulated wide-area network.

Authors with CRIS profile

Tobias Distler Lehrstuhl für Informatik 4 (Verteilte Systeme und Betriebssysteme) Rüdiger Kapitza

Related research project(s)

Resource-Efficient Fault and Intrusion Tolerance (REFIT) Oct. 1, 2009 - Sept. 30, 2023

Involved external institutions

Technische Universität Braunschweig DE Germany (DE) Imperial College London / The Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine GB United Kingdom (GB)

How to cite

APA:

Li, B., Weichbrodt, N., Behl, J., Aublin, P.-L., Distler, T., & Kapitza, R. (2018). Troxy: Transparent Access to Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Systems. In Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '18) (pp. 59-70). Luxembourg City, Luxembourg: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc..

MLA:

Li, Bijun, et al. "Troxy: Transparent Access to Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Systems." Proceedings of the 48th International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '18), Luxembourg City, Luxembourg Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc., 2018. 59-70.

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