Distributed systems and distributed information processing have received considerable attention in the past few years, and almost every university offers at least one course on the design of distributed algorithms. There exist a large number of books about principles of distributed systems; see for example Tanenbaum [Tan96] or Sloman and Kramer [SK87], but these concentrate on architectural aspects rather than on algorithms. Since the first edition of this book, other texts on distributed algorithms have been published by Barbosa [Bar96], Lynch [Lyn96], and Attiya and Welch [AW98].

It has been remarked that algorithms are the backbone of every computer application; therefore a text devoted solely to distributed algorithms seems to be justified. The aim of this book is to present a large body of theory about distributed algorithms, which has been developed over the past twenty years or so. This book can be used as a textbook for a one- or two-semester course on distributed algorithms; the teacher of a one-semester course may select topics to his own liking.

The book will also provide useful background and reference information for professional engineers and researchers working with distributed systems.

Exercises. Each chapter (with the exception of Chapters 1 and 13) ends with a list of exercises and small projects. The projects usually require the reader to develop a small but non-trivial extension or application of the material treated in the chapter, and in most cases I do not have a “solution”.