Re: [MLS] Message Order

Hi Konstantinos,

Thanks for reaching out.  I think the current thinking is described in the
"Sequencing of State Changes" section of the current document [1].  (It
probably needs a rewrite, thought, to use more current terminology.)  In
brief:

* The protocol allows each state/epoch to have a single successor [2],
* So the members of the group need to agree on which Commit message causes
this epoch change.
* In some deployment cases, a straightforward way to achieve such agreement
is to ensure that all members receive Commits in the same order, so they
can just take the first one
* You could also envision applying other techniques to agree on which
Commit is applied, e.g., running a consensus protocol
* These requirements apply only to Commits; Proposals and application
messages are uncontentious, and can be arbitrarily reordered in any case

The requirement for strict ordering of states is something the group has
accepted for a while, since in the primary use case, with a centralized
Delivery Service, it seems reasonably achievable.  However, it is
problematic for more decentralized cases, Matrix [3] being the
most-discussed example.  To make those scenarios work better, you would
need (a) non-linear epoch IDs so that you could tolerate forks in the state
history, and (b) a "merge" algorithm so that you could coalesce two forks.
Both of those are areas where some additional thinking could be helpful.

Hope that helps!
--Richard

[1]
https://github.com/mlswg/mls-protocol/blob/master/draft-ietf-mls-protocol.md#sequencing-of-state-changes-sequencing
[2] ... because epochs are identified with a counter, cf.
https://github.com/mlswg/mls-protocol/pull/245
[3] https://matrix.org

On Mon, Dec 16, 2019 at 1:46 PM Andrikopoulos Konstantinos <
kandriko@student.ethz.ch> wrote:

> Hello,
>
>
> I am a computer science master's student, focusing on cryptography and
> security. As a part of a small research project, supervised by Kenneth
> Paterson, I am looking into the MLS protocol. In particular, we have been
> paying attention the message reordering problems that are mentioned in the
> current draft of the protocol.
>
>
> The purpose I am writing this email is that, before we continue further
> with the project, we would like to see if you have already decided on the
> direction that you would like the solution to follow. Would you be able to
> point us to any texts that you may have compiled or past discussions on the
> subject?
>
>
> Thank you,
>
> Konstantinos
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