Kinda neat. Splits the big problem of consensus into ordering and replication, and then leans on a network device like a switch to 'solve' the ordering problem

Kinda neat. Splits the big problem of consensus into ordering and replication, and then leans on a network device like a switch to 'solve' the ordering problem in the context of a single data center. The key observation is that all those packets are going through the switch anyways, and the switch has enough spare compute to maintain a counter and add it as a header to packets, and it can easily be dynamically programmed with SDN... I bet public clouds could offer this as a specialized 'ordered multicast vnet' infrastructure primitive to build intra-dc replicated systems on top of.