Performance Analysis of the Raft Consensus Algorithm for Private Blockchains

Consensus is one of the key problems in blockchains. There are many articles analyzing the performance of threat models for blockchains. But the network stability seems lack of attention, which in fact affects the blockchain performance. This paper studies the performance of a well adopted consensus...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on systems, man, and cybernetics. Systems Vol. 50; no. 1; pp. 172 - 181
Main Authors Huang, Dongyan, Ma, Xiaoli, Zhang, Shengli
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York IEEE 01.01.2020
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects
Online AccessGet full text
ISSN2168-2216
2168-2232
DOI10.1109/TSMC.2019.2895471

Cover

More Information
Summary:Consensus is one of the key problems in blockchains. There are many articles analyzing the performance of threat models for blockchains. But the network stability seems lack of attention, which in fact affects the blockchain performance. This paper studies the performance of a well adopted consensus algorithm, Raft, in networks with non-negligible packet loss rate. In particular, we propose a simple but accurate analytical model to analyze the distributed network split probability. At a given time, we explicitly present the network split probability as a function of the network size, the packet loss rate, and the election timeout period. To validate our analysis, we implement a Raft simulator and the simulation results coincide with the analytical results. With the proposed model, one can predict the network split time and probability in theory and optimize the parameters in Raft consensus algorithm.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
content type line 14
ISSN:2168-2216
2168-2232
DOI:10.1109/TSMC.2019.2895471