PaxosLease adapts exclusive resource leases for relativistic motion
PaxosLease in Relativistic Inertial Frames
Distributed, Parallel, and Cluster Computing
Summary
When devices move very fast relative to each other, time measurements can differ because of Einstein's special relativity, making it hard to say who holds a resource lease at any moment. The authors explain how to update the safety rule for exclusive leases so all observers agree on the order of lease holders. They adjust a popular algorithm, PaxosLease, by scaling its timing rules with a factor based on the relative speed between participants, ensuring safety even in relativistic settings.
What this means in practice
- •For distributed system engineers: Design reliable resource coordination protocols that remain safe when nodes move at relativistic speeds or are in relative motion with uncertain clocks.
- •For satellite communication teams: Develop leasing algorithms that respect relativistic timing effects for managing resource access across fast-moving spacecraft or satellites.
A theory result. No direct application yet.
Authors
Márton Trencséni
Abstract
A lease grants one holder exclusive authority over a resource for a fixed term, and its safety property guarantees that at most one holder has the lease at any time. Under special relativity ``at any time'' has no frame-independent meaning for participants in relative motion. This note first restates the classical safety property with light cones, requiring a holder's expiry to lie in the causal past of any later acquisition by a different holder, an order every observer agrees about. Second, the paper modifies classical PaxosLease: the core change is that the containment and quarantine rules each gain a factor of $k = \sqrt{(1+β)/(1-β)}$, the relativistic Doppler factor, where $β$ is relative speed as a fraction of the speed of light.