The Byzantine general's new territory (network model)

Traditionally, the Byzantine agreement (BA) problem is solved either in a fully connected network or in a broadcast network with processors in malicious failure only. A generalized network model for the BA is proposed. The conventional fully connected network or broadcast network is a special case of the new network architecture. Under the new generalized network, the BA problem is reexamined with the assumption of malicious faults on both processors and transmission media (TMs); the proposed algorithm uses the minimal number of message exchanges and can tolerate the maximal number of allowable faulty components to make each health processor reach a common agreement for the cases of processor failures, TM failures, or processor/TM failures.<>