Abstract
The paper considers a consensus algorithm for an asynchronous system augmented with failure detectors, and analyze the impact on its termination time of various implementations of failure detectors. This study shows that the design of fault-tolerant Distributed algorithms in the asynchronous system model augmented with failure detectors is orthogonal to implementing the actual failure detectors. This nicely decouples logical issues (proof of correctness) from engineering issues (e.g., performance and timing constraints).