Shlomi Dolev and Jennifer L. Welch

An end-to-end data delivery protocol for dynamic communication networks is presented. The protocol uses bounded sequence numbers and can tolerate both link failures and (intermediate) processor crashes. Previous bounded end-to-end protocols could not tolerate crashes. We present a self-stabilizing version of the algorithm that can recover from crashes of the sender and the receiver as well as of intermediate processors. Starting with the network in an arbitrary state, the self-stabilizing version guarantees proper transmission of messages following a finite convergence period.