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.
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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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