Distributed Systems: An Algorithmic Approach (Chapman & Hall/CRC Computer & Information Science Series)

Description

I have been teaching distributed systems and distributed algorithms related courses at graduate level for over 15 years and it is the first time I have come across a book of a favorable context, right measure and length on this topic. This is a formal book on distributed systems using distributed algorithms approach yet it has a lot of practical concern. It is very concise, right up to the point, says it all but not a single sentence more. It uses a very much different style than its rivals which at one extreme are very verbal at systems and protocols level rather than algorithmic level; and very mathematical with hard to follow proofs at the other. Algorithms are presented in a simple style along with short and sound proofs in this book which makes it very comfortable to follow. The only criticism I have is that if the graph algorithms part could be extended a bit more to include distributed DFS, BFS algorithms along with distributed independent set and dominating set algorithms, it would reflect the current trends in distributed systems more.Nevertheless, I think this is the best currently available book on distributed algorithms. After purchasing this book slightly after the beginning of the semester, I ended up modifying all my notes for a current distributed algorithms course to reflect the contents of this book.