Electing leaders based upon performance: the delay model

In a distributed system an algorithm used to select a distinguished node or leader in the system is known as a leader election algorithm. Leader election algorithms are examined that attempt to locate the leader at a good node (from a performance standpoint) in the system. In the preference-based approaches examined, each node in the system uses locally available information to vote for the various candidates (potential leaders) on the basis of the performance level it would realize under each of them. The preference-based leader election algorithms proposed and examined are simple, and are shown to perform almost as well as a traditional optimization-based approach to leader election