Abstract
A black hole is a highly harmful stationary process residing in a node of a network and destroying all mobile agents visiting the node, without leaving any trace. We consider the task of locating a black hole in a (partially) synchronous tree network, assuming an upper bound on the time of any edge traversal by an agent. The minimum number of agents capable to identify a black hole is two. For a given tree and given starting node we are interested in the fastest possible black hole search by two agents. For arbitrary trees we give a 5/3-approximation algorithm for this problem. We give optimal black hole search algorithms for two “extreme” classes of trees: the class of lines and the class of trees in which any internal node (including the root which is the starting node) has at least 2 children.
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Dobrev, S., Flocchini, P., Kralovic, R., Prencipe, G., Ruzicka, P., Santoro, N.: Black hole search by mobile agents in hypercubes and related networks. In: Proc. of Symposium on Principles of Distributed Systems (OPODIS 2002), pp. 171–182 (2002)
Dobrev, S., Flocchini, P., Prencipe, G., Santoro, N.: Mobile agents searching for a black hole in an anonymous ring. In: Welch, J.L. (ed.) DISC 2001. LNCS, vol. 2180, pp. 166–179. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)
Dobrev, S., Flocchini, P., Prencipe, G., Santoro, N.: Searching for a black hole in arbitrary networks: Optimal Mobile Agents Protocols. In: Proc. 21st ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2002), pp. 153–161 (2002)
Dobrev, S., Flocchini, P., Prencipe, G., Santoro, N.: Multiple agents rendezvous on a ring in spite of a black hole. In: Proc. Symposium on Principles of Distributed Systems, OPODIS 2003 (2003)
Hohl, F.: Time limited black box security: Protecting mobile agents from malicious hosts. In: Vigna, G. (ed.) Mobile Agents and Security. LNCS, vol. 1419, pp. 92–113. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Hohl, F.: A framework to protect mobile agents by using reference states. In: Proc. 20th Int. Conf. on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS 2000), pp. 410–417 (2000)
Ng, S., Cheung, K.: Protecting mobile agents against malicious hosts by intention of spreading. In: Proc. Int. Conf. on Parallel and Distributed Processing and Applications (PDPTA 1999), pp. 725–729 (1999)
Sander, T., Tschudin, C.F.: Protecting mobile agents against malicious hosts. In: Vigna, G. (ed.) Mobile Agents and Security. LNCS, vol. 1419, pp. 44–60. Springer, Heidelberg (1998)
Schelderup, K., Ines, J.: Mobile agent security – issues and directions. In: Zuidweg, H., Campolargo, M., Delgado, J., Mullery, A. (eds.) IS&N 1999. LNCS, vol. 1597, pp. 155–167. Springer, Heidelberg (1999)
Vitek, J., Castagna, G.: Mobile computations and hostile hosts. In: Tsichritzis, D. (ed.) Mobile Objects, University of Geneva, pp. 241–261 (1999)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2005 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Czyzowicz, J., Kowalski, D., Markou, E., Pelc, A. (2005). Searching for a Black Hole in Tree Networks. In: Higashino, T. (eds) Principles of Distributed Systems. OPODIS 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3544. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11516798_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11516798_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-27324-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-31584-1
eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)