Introduction to Distributed Algorithms

Rating:
Summary: Simply the Best Book on Distributed Algorithms!
Review: Gerard Tel's is easily the best compilation of distributed computing algorithms existing. First the contents:

I found its coverage to be excellent, broad yet deep coverage on network algorithms and protocols for communication, routing, deadlock-free packet switching, election, termination, global snapshot, sychronization, authenticating, self-stabilization, failure detection, wave, traversal, deadlock detection, fault tolerance, consensus, sense of direction and orientation, etc. It terms of breadth of coverage no existing book compares to this book. In particular it covers more recent areas like sense of direction and orientation and wave algorithms missed by its main competitor Nancy Lynch's Distributed Algorithms.

It uses very intuitive pseudocode and the algorthimic analysis and proofs are quite intuitive and easier to understand.

My complaints: The coverage in a few areas like consensus are not nearly as comprehensive as Nancy Lynch's. Also, Tel covers algorithms for asynchronous systems mostly and synchronous systems, but Nancy Lynch covers partially synchronous systems as well.

I recommend Gerard Tel's book which costs less and has a deeper and broader topic coverage. For balance you need both books if you can afford them (and indeed Vijay Garg's Elemenets of Distributed Computing as well). Vijay Garg's new book - Concurrent and Distributed Computing in Java would be the best for you if your focus is distributed software development as opposed to algorithmic computing.

For coverage of distributed systems principles, design and architecture I recommend one of the 3 'Distributed Systems' books by Courolis OR Andrew Tanenbaum OR Sape Mullender.

Rating:
Summary: translation
Review: Je trouve à M. Tel le maître des algorithmes distribués. Les concepts sont précis et bien documentés. Le livre est très complet, très claire et on peut trouver une extense bibliographie sur le sujet.

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I find the author to be a master of distributed algorithms. The concepts were precise and well written. The book is very complete, very clear and you'll find in it an extensive coverage on the the subject.
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