A comprehensive guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than mathematical argumentation.

The new edition of a guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than the intricacies of mathematical models. This book offers students and researchers a guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than the intricacies of mathematical models. It avoids mathematical argumentation, often a stumbling block for students, teaching algorithmic thought rather than proofs and logic. This approach allows the student to learn a large number of algorithms within a relatively short span of time. Algorithms are explained through brief, informal descriptions, illuminating examples, and practical exercises. The examples and exercises allow readers to understand algorithms intuitively and from different perspectives. Proof sketches, arguing the correctness of an algorithm or explaining the idea behind fundamental results, are also included. The algorithms presented in the book are for the most part “classics,” selected because they shed light on the algorithmic design of distributed systems or on key issues in distributed computing and concurrent programming. This second edition has been substantially revised. A new chapter on distributed transaction offers up-to-date treatment of database transactions and the important evolving area of transactional memory. A new chapter on security discusses two exciting new topics: blockchains and quantum cryptography. Sections have been added that cover such subjects as rollback recovery, fault-tolerant termination detection, and consensus for shared memory. An appendix offers pseudocode descriptions of many algorithms. Solutions and slides are available for instructors. Distributed Algorithms can be used in courses for upper-level undergraduates or graduate students in computer science, or as a reference for researchers in the field.

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.

A comprehensive guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than mathematical argumentation. This book offers students and researchers a guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than the intricacies of mathematical models. It avoids mathematical argumentation, often a stumbling block for students, teaching algorithmic thought rather than proofs and logic. This approach allows the student to learn a large number of algorithms within a relatively short span of time. Algorithms are explained through brief, informal descriptions, illuminating examples, and practical exercises. The examples and exercises allow readers to understand algorithms intuitively and from different perspectives. Proof sketches, arguing the correctness of an algorithm or explaining the idea behind fundamental results, are also included. An appendix offers pseudocode descriptions of many algorithms. Distributed algorithms are performed by a collection of computers that send messages to each other or by multiple software threads that use the same shared memory. The algorithms presented in the book are for the most part “classics,” selected because they shed light on the algorithmic design of distributed systems or on key issues in distributed computing and concurrent programming. Distributed Algorithms can be used in courses for upper-level undergraduates or graduate students in computer science, or as a reference for researchers in the field.

The new edition of a guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than the intricacies of mathematical models. This book offers students and researchers a guide to distributed algorithms that emphasizes examples and exercises rather than the intricacies of mathematical models. It avoids mathematical argumentation, often a stumbling block for students, teaching algorithmic thought rather than proofs and logic. This approach allows the student to learn a large number of algorithms within a relatively short span of time. Algorithms are explained through brief, informal descriptions, illuminating examples, and practical exercises. The examples and exercises allow readers to understand algorithms intuitively and from different perspectives. Proof sketches, arguing the correctness of an algorithm or explaining the idea behind fundamental results, are also included. The algorithms presented in the book are for the most part “classics,” selected because they shed light on the algorithmic design of distributed systems or on key issues in distributed computing and concurrent programming. This second edition has been substantially revised. A new chapter on distributed transaction offers up-to-date treatment of database transactions and the important evolving area of transactional memory. A new chapter on security discusses two exciting new topics: blockchains and quantum cryptography. Sections have been added that cover such subjects as rollback recovery, fault-tolerant termination detection, and consensus for shared memory. An appendix offers pseudocode descriptions of many algorithms. Solutions and slides are available for instructors. Distributed Algorithms can be used in courses for upper-level undergraduates or graduate students in computer science, or as a reference for researchers in the field.

Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach, Second Edition provides a balanced and straightforward treatment of the underlying theory and practical applications of distributed computing. As in the previous version, the language is kept as unobscured as possible—clarity is given priority over mathematical formalism. This easily digestible text: Features significant updates that mirror the phenomenal growth of distributed systems Explores new topics related to peer-to-peer and social networks Includes fresh exercises, examples, and case studies Supplying a solid understanding of the key principles of distributed computing and their relationship to real-world applications, Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach, Second Edition makes both an ideal textbook and a handy professional reference.

Distributed computing is at the heart of many applications. It arises as soon as one has to solve a problem in terms of entities -- such as processes, peers, processors, nodes, or agents -- that individually have only a partial knowledge of the many input parameters associated with the problem. In particular each entity cooperating towards the common goal cannot have an instantaneous knowledge of the current state of the other entities. Whereas parallel computing is mainly concerned with 'efficiency', and real-time computing is mainly concerned with 'on-time computing', distributed computing is mainly concerned with 'mastering uncertainty' created by issues such as the multiplicity of control flows, asynchronous communication, unstable behaviors, mobility, and dynamicity. While some distributed algorithms consist of a few lines only, their behavior can be difficult to understand and their properties hard to state and prove. The aim of this book is to present in a comprehensive way the basic notions, concepts, and algorithms of distributed computing when the distributed entities cooperate by sending and receiving messages on top of an asynchronous network. The book is composed of seventeen chapters structured into six parts: distributed graph algorithms, in particular what makes them different from sequential or parallel algorithms; logical time and global states, the core of the book; mutual exclusion and resource allocation; high-level communication abstractions; distributed detection of properties; and distributed shared memory. The author establishes clear objectives per chapter and the content is supported throughout with illustrative examples, summaries, exercises, and annotated bibliographies. This book constitutes an introduction to distributed computing and is suitable for advanced undergraduate students or graduate students in computer science and computer engineering, graduate students in mathematics interested in distributed computing, and practitioners and engineers involved in the design and implementation of distributed applications. The reader should have a basic knowledge of algorithms and operating systems.