Introduction to Distributed Algorithms

Distributed algorithms have been the subject of intense development over the last twenty years. The second edition of this successful textbook provides an up-to-date introduction both to the topic, and to the theory behind the algorithms. The clear presentation makes the book suitable for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, whilst the coverage is sufficiently deep to make it useful for practising engineers and researchers. The author concentrates on algorithms for the point-to-point message passing model, and includes algorithms for the implementation of computer communication networks. Other key areas discussed are algorithms for the control of distributed applications (wave, broadcast, election, termination detection, randomized algorithms for anonymous networks, snapshots, deadlock detection, synchronous systems), and fault-tolerance achievable by distributed algorithms. The two new chapters on sense of direction and failure detectors are state-of-the-art and will provide an entry to research in these still-developing topics. "The second edition of this textbook provides an up-to-date introduction both to the topic, and to the theory behind the algorithms. The clear presentation makes the book suitable for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, whilst the coverage is sufficiently deep to make it useful for practising engineers and researchers." "The author concentrates on algorithms for the point-to-point message passing model, and includes algorithms for the implementation of computer communication networks. Other key areas discussed are algorithms for the control of distributed applications and fault tolerance achievable by distributed algorithms. The two new chapters on sense of direction and failure detectors are state-of-the-art and will provide an entry to research in these still developing topics."--Jacket

The second edition of this successful textbook provides an up-to-date introduction both to distributed algorithms and to the theory behind them. The clear presentation makes the book suitable for advanced undergraduate or graduate courses, while the coverage is sufficiently deep to make it useful for practicing engineers and researchers. The author concentrates on algorithms for the point-to-point message passing model and includes algorithms for the implementation of computer communication networks. Two new chapters on sense of direction and failure detectors are state of the art and will provide an entry to research in these still-developing topics.

This chapter gives reasons for the study of distributed algorithms by briefly introducing the types of hardware and software systems for which distributed algorithms have been developed.