Symmetric and synchronous communication in peer-to-peer networks

Abstract

Motivated by distributed implementations of game-theoretical algorithms, we study symmetric process systems and the problem of attaining common knowledge between processes. We formalize our setting by defining a notion of peer-to-peer networks and appropriate symmetry concepts in the context of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP) [1]. We then prove that CSP with input and output guards makes common knowledge in symmetric peer-to-peer networks possible, but not the restricted version which disallows output statements in guards and is commonly implemented. Our results extend [2]. An extended version is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0710.2284. © 2008 Springer-Verlag.