Counting in Anonymous Dynamic Networks under Worst-Case Adversary

In this paper we investigate the problem of counting the size of a network where processes are anonymous (i.e., they share the same identifier) and the network topology constantly changes controlled by an adversary able to look internal process states and add and remove edges in order to contrast the convergence of the algorithm to the correct count. It is easy to show that, if the adversary can generate graphs without any constraint on the connectivity (i.e. it can generate topologies where there exist nodes not able to influence the others), counting is impossible. In this paper we consider a synchronous round based computation and the dynamicity is governed by a worst-case adversary that generates a sequence of graphs, one for each round, with the only constraint that each graph must be connected (1-interval connectivity property). It has been conjectured that counting in a finite time against such adversary is impossible and the existing solutions consider that each process has some knowledge about network topologies generated by the adversary, i.e. at each round, each node has a degree lesser than D. Along the path of proving the validity (or not) of the conjecture, this paper presents an algorithm that counts in a finite time against the worst-case adversary assuming each process is equipped with an oracle. The latter provides a process at each round r with an estimation of the process degree in the graph generated by the adversary at round r. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first counting algorithm (terminating in a finite time) where processes exploit the minimal knowledge about the behavior of the adversary. Interestingly, such oracle can be implemented in a wide range of real systems.