Patent ID: 7711825

Claim:
A method for distributed computing, the method comprising: performing a distributed fault-tolerant consensus process in a distributed computing system to coordinate execution of system functions by a plurality of computing devices implementing said distributed computing system, wherein performing a distributed fault-tolerant consensus process comprises: transmitting a message from a first transmitting device to a first recipient device, said first transmitting device generating said message while acting as a leader device among the plurality of computing devices, wherein the message comprises a proposed value, a vote for the proposed value, a first proposal identifier and a first step identifier, wherein the vote for the proposed value in said message provides the first recipient device information to determine, based on the vote for the proposed value and its own vote, whether a first quorum of the distributed computing system has selected the proposed value in a first system step identified by the first step identifier; and selecting the proposed value and transmitting, without waiting for additional messages, the selection of the proposed value to a client device that had originally proposed the proposed value, if the first proposal identifier is greater than or equal to a previously responded to proposal identifier.