Formal Specification And Analysis Of Termination Detection By Weight-Throwing Protocol

Termination detection is a critical problem in distributed systems. A distributed computation is called terminated if all of its processes become idle and there are no in-transit messages in communication channels. A distributed termination detection protocol is used to detect the state of a process at any time, i.e., terminated, idle or active. A termination detection protocol on the basis of weight-throwing scheme is described in Yu-Chee Tseng, "Detecting Termination by Weight-throwing in a Faulty Distributed System", JPDC, 15 February 1995. We apply model checking techniques to verify the protocol and for formal specification and verification the tool-set UPPAAL is used. Our results show that the protocol fails to fulfil some of its functional requirements.