A hybrid approach for mutual exclusion in distributed computing systems

We propose a hybrid algorithm to achieve mutual exclusion in distributed systems. In our algorithm we propose a logical grouping of the sites into a hierarchical structure. We have used different algorithms to achieve mutual exclusion at each level of the hierarchy. The hierarchical structure is not rigid and can be modified to achieve different performance criteria. We demonstrate the adaptable nature of this approach which leads to better overall performance. The hybrid algorithm needs only a maximum of 2/spl radic/N+1 messages where N is the number of sites in the distributed system. This can be further reduced to just 5 messages per CS invocation at high loads by making small modifications to the original hybrid algorithm. The best features of this algorithm are its deadlock-free nature and its low message traffic at high loads.<
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