On the Complexity of Asynchronous Gossip

In this paper, we study the complexity of gossip in an asynchronous, message-passing fault-prone distributed system. In short, we show that an adaptive adversary can significantly hamper the spreading of a rumor, while an oblivious adversary cannot. In the latter case, we present three randomized algorithms for achieving gossip, each offering a different trade-off between time and message complexity. We then show how to use these gossip algorithms to develop message-efficient asynchronous (randomized) consensus protocols.