Abstract
The symmetry breaking problem is the problem of electing a leader in a network of indistinguishable processes. There is no deterministic solution for this problem. We provide here efficient probabilistic protocols for breaking symmetry in a unidirectional ring. For rings of unrestricted asynchrony, we provide a protocol needing only O(n) messages in the average. Yet, the average bit complexity of the protocol is still O(nlogn). We manage to get a message complexity below the Ω(nlogn) lower bound of [Burns, 80], by allowing our protocol to deadlock, with arbitrarily small probability, controllable by the implementer. The possibility of more than one leaders being elected is not allowed by our protocol.
This work was supported in part by the ESPRIT Basic Research Actions Project ALCOM and by the Ministry of Education of Greece.
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Spirakis, P., Tampakas, B., Tsiolis, A. (1989). Symmetry breaking in asynchronous rings with o(n) messages. In: Bermond, JC., Raynal, M. (eds) Distributed Algorithms. WDAG 1989. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 392. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51687-5_46
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-51687-5_46
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