Development of a class of distributed termination detection algorithms

Accessing and updating information in a self organizing data structure in a distributed environment requires execution of various distributed algorithms. Design of such algorithms is often facilitated by the use of a distributed termination detection algorithm superimposed on top of another distributed algorithm. The problem of distributed termination detection is considered, and message counting is introduced as an effective technique in designing such algorithms. A class of efficient algorithms, based on the idea of message counting, for this problem is presented. After termination has occurred, it is detected within a small number of message communications. These algorithms do not require the FIFO (first in, first out) property for the communication lines. Assumptions regarding the connectivity of the processes are simple. The algorithms are incrementally developed, i.e. a succession of algorithms leading to the final algorithms is presented