EFFICIENT DETECTION OF A CLASS OF STABLE PROPERTIES

We present a general protocol for detecting whether a property holds i n a distributed system, where the property is a member of a class of s table properties we call the locally stable properties. Our protocol i s based on a decentralized method for constructing a maximal subset of the local states that are mutually consistent, which in turn is based on a weakened version of vector time stamps. The structure of our pro tocol lends itself to refinement, and we demonstrate its utility by de riving some specialized property-detection protocols, including two pr eviously-known protocols that are known to be efficient.