A new token based distributed mutual exclusion algorithm

The authors present a new token based distributed mutual exclusion algorithm for a distributed computer system of N sites. The proposed algorithm is based on timestamps and the theory of finite projective planes. It also makes use of a "Token Queue" which is part of the token and contains a list of all sites which are requesting the token. The algorithm is deadlock free, free from starvation, and requires no message exchange in the best case, and 4/spl radic/N - 2 message exchanges in the worst case per critical section execution.