Madhavan Mukund


Keeping Track of the Latest Gossip in a Distributed System

M Mukund and M Sohoni

Distributed Computing, 10, 3, (1997) 137-148.

Abstract

We tackle a natural problem from distributed computing, involving time-stamps. Let Proc = {p1,p2,...,pN} be a set of computing agents or processes which synchronize with each other from time to time and exchange information about themselves and others. The gossip problem is the following: Whenever a subset P of processes from Proc meets, the processes in P must decide amongst themselves which of them has the latest information, direct or indirect, about each agent p in the system.

We propose an algorithm to solve this problem which is finite-state and local. Formally, this means that our algorithm can be implemented as an asynchronous automaton.