Consistency management in Deno

We describe a new replicated-object protocol designed for use in mobile and weakly-connected environments. The protocol differs from previous protocol s in combining epidemic information propagation with voting, and in using f ixed per-object currencies for voting. The advantage of epidemic protocols is that data movement only requires pair-wise communication. Hence, there i s no need far a majority quorum to be available and simultaneously connecte d at any single time. The protocols increase availability by using voting, rather than primary-copy or primary-commit schemes. Finally, the use of per -object currencies allows voting to take place in an entirely decentralized fashion, without any server having complete knowledge of group membership. We show that currency allocation can be used to implement diverse policies . For example, uniform currency distributions emulate traditional voting sc hemes, while allocating all currency to a single server emulates a primary- copy scheme. We present simulation results showing both schemes, as well as the performance advantages of using currency proxies to temporarily reallo cate currency during planned disconnections. Furthermore, we discuss an ini tial design of the underlying replicated-object system and present a basic API.