[nieksand]

Having followers redirect to the leader is how the paper describes the algorithm.

But I don't think there is anything stopping you from having followers service committed log entry reads, provided you're willing to live with being out-of-date.

[tomjohnson3]

i don't think this is the case. here is a link to a video by one of the authors about log repair during leader election:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YbZ...

log entries on a follower may get rolled back - and thrown out - since they were not accepted on a majority of followers.