Diagram of communication pattern between replicas

Question

Can you recommend a good approach how to model a communication pattern between different replicas (nodes, servers, ...), like the one below.

(source: Miguel Castro, Barbara Liskov, et al. Practical Byzantine fault tolerance. 1999)

I have not been able to find anything for TeX, so before I resort to external image, is there a TeX/TikZ/etc solution?

Answer 1

The code below, which produces the following diagram, should get you started:

The coordinates are from (0,4) in the top left-hand corner to (5,0) in the bottom right-hand corner (I have made the x-scale 2 to fit your column labels in).

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{arrows.meta}
\begin{document}

\begin{tikzpicture}[xscale=2]
  \foreach \row [count=\r] in {C,0,1,2,3} {
    \draw[thick](0,5-\r)node[left]{\row} -- ++(5,0);
  }
  \foreach \col [count=\c] in {request,pre-prepare,prepare,commit,reply}{
      \draw[dotted] (\c,5)node[above left, anchor=east]{\col}--++(0,-5);
  }
  \foreach \a/\b/\c/\d in {% arrow from (\a,\b) to (\a+\c,\b+\d)
        0.2/4/0.7/-1,
        1.2/3/0.8/-1,
        1.2/3/0.7/-2,
        1.2/3/0.6/-3
      }{ \draw[blue,-{Stealth}] (\a,\b)--++(\c,\d); }
\end{tikzpicture}

\end{document}