A survey of permission-based distributed mutual exclusion algorithms

The problem of mutual exclusion in distributed systems has attracted considerable attention over the last two decades. The mutual exclusion problem requires that, at a time, only one of the contending processes be allowed to enter its critical section (CS). A number of solutions have been provided to the mutual exclusion problem in distributed systems. Different algorithms have used different techniques to achieve mutual exclusion and have different performances. Depending on the technique used, these algorithms have been classified as token-based and permission-based algorithms. In this paper, we present a survey of various permission-based distributed mutual exclusion (PBDME) algorithms and their comparative performance. D 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.