Dependability engineering of silent self-stabilizing systems

Abstract. Self-stabilization is an elegant way of realizing non-masking fault-tolerant systems. Sustained research over last decades has produced multiple self-stabilizing algorithms for many problems in distributed com-puting. In this paper, we present a framework to evaluate multiple self-stabilizing solutions under a fault model that allows intermittent transient faults. To that end, metrics to quantify the dependability of self-stabilizing systems are defined. It is also shown how to derive models that are suitable for probabilistic model checking in order to determine those dependability metrics. A heuristics-based method is presented to analyze counterexam-ples returned by a probabilistic model checker in case the system under investigation does not exhibit the desired degree of dependability. Based on the analysis, the self-stabilizing algorithm is subsequently refined.