Reasoning about Gossip  

http://reasoningaboutgossip.eu

Gossip protocols are peer-to-peer communication protocols with the intent to maximize information dissemination among processes or agents while respecting network or transmission constraints. The subject of gossip protocols has been a standard feature in the networks and combinatorics community since the 1970s. From, roughly, the 1990s onward this topic has also become standard in the area of distributed computing. Since around the mid 2010s epistemic distributed versions of such protocols have been investigated. They focus on information-based (epistemic) choice for agents to communicate with other network nodes (agents) in order to speed up information dissemination. The subject thus became ever more rooted in distributed computing but including an intersection with epistemic logic and its dynamics. Smarter and more involved forms of communication, apart from messaging (to one agent), broadcasting (to all agent), and multi-casting (to some agents), seem to require ever more involved epistemic forms of analysis. 'Reasoning about gossip' provides an overview of the state of the art while simultaneously presenting the material in textbook fashion, including exercises and answers to exercises. 

This textbook / monograph is currently under development. The book will appear in the series Cambridge Tracts in Theoretical Computer Science of Cambridge University Press. The publication date is not known yet. The tentative outline of chapters is as below. Chapters in near final form can be downloaded: comments from readers and students will be very highly appreciated! Note that all materials are copyright by the author Hans van Ditmarsch. 

Expect this website to be regularly updated over the coming months. In due time on this website will also appear: a link to the publisher's site for Reasoning about Gossip, answers to selected exercises in the book, and slide presentations for individual chapters in pdf format.

Table of contents (Oct 24)

         Preface (Oct 24)    

    1. Introduction (Oct 24)

    2. Call (Sept 23)

    3. Gossip protocol (Sept 23)

    4. Parameters for gossip

    5. Reachability (Sept 23)

    6. Dynamic gossip (Sept 23)

    7. Optimality

    8. Epistemic logic (Oct 24)

   9. Knowledge of gossip protocols

 10. Epistemic goals

 11. Error

 12. Update

 13. Axiomatization

 14. Outlook

        References (Sept 23)