Leader election in distributed computing systems

In a distributed computing system, a change in the state of the system usually requires that the new state be propagated to all active nodes so that they can correctly perform cooperative tasks. Since more than one node may detect a status change, conflicts in state determination and propagation are possible. In order to ensure that all nodes of a communicating group are at the same state, all nodes of the group must agree upon the election of a single leader (coordinator). In this paper, we present an Election Protocol for General Configuration networks (EPGC). The protocol was tested on different well known configurations and its performance was studied using simulation modeling techniques. The simulation study showed a trade off between the election time and the number of exchanged messages. A technique to minimize the number of messages was then introduced. Both positive and negative effects of this technique were observed.