Implementation and Evaluation of Fast Raft for Hierarchical Consensus

TL;DR

This paper introduces Fast Raft, a hierarchical consensus protocol with a new fast-track mechanism, implemented and evaluated using gRPC and Kubernetes, showing improved throughput and latency while preserving safety and liveness.

Contribution

It provides the first open-source implementation and comprehensive evaluation of Fast Raft, a novel hierarchical consensus protocol designed for dynamic distributed environments.

Findings

Improved throughput and reduced commit latency under low packet loss.

Maintains safety and liveness guarantees of Raft.

Effective deployment using gRPC and Kubernetes across AWS zones.

Abstract

We present the first open-source implementation and evaluation of Fast Raft, a hierarchical consensus protocol designed for dynamic, distributed environments. Fast Raft reduces the number of message rounds needed to commit log entries compared to standard Raft by introducing a fast-track mechanism and reducing leader dependence. Our implementation uses gRPC and Kubernetes-based deployment across AWS availability zones. Experimental results demonstrate a throughput improvement and reduced commit latency under low packet loss conditions, while maintaining Raft's safety and liveness guarantees.