Marzullo's algorithm

Marzullo's algorithm, invented by Keith Marzullo for his Ph.D. dissertation in 1984, is an agreement algorithm used to select sources for estimating accurate time from a number of noisy time sources. A refined version of it, renamed the "intersection algorithm", forms part of the modern Network Time Protocol. Marzullo's algorithm is also used to compute the relaxed intersection of n boxes (or more generally n subsets of Rⁿ), as required by several robust set estimation methods.