The system considered is the same as in Section 4.1.
Nodes always follow the specification of the algorithm until they fail. They can fail by crashing and a node can recover, joining the system again with the same unique identifier as before the failure. Hence, a node keeps its identifier regardless of its state, and two nodes cannot have the same identifier. However, a node does not recover its state neither its knowledge of the network membership, thus, is initialized again.
Initially, all nodes in the system are in the correct state. A node is considered faulty if it fails and does not recover, or if it leaves the system forever. Otherwise, if present in the system, it is considered correct.
The assumptions for the communication graph are the same as in Section 4.1.2.
Nodes can only communicate by broadcasting local messages, which are received by all neighbors of the sending node. Communication is based on a fixed Wi-Fi channel, chosen beforehand. Eventually reliable communication channels are considered, with messages losses induced by messages interference and collisions. The CSMA/CA protocol included in IEEE 802.11 [09], is used to handle messages losses. There are no assumptions about message ordering, i.e. messages can be delivered out of order.
Initially, each node only knows its unique identifier in the system. This means that nodes do not know the total number of nodes, neither the membership of the system. Nodes detect their neighbors through a cross-layer mechanism described in Section 5.2.4, using already existing beacon messages of the data link layer. A node gets knowledge of the network membership by receiving knowledge messages from its neighbors.