During the last ten years, the communications field has been characterized by an unprecedented evolution of wireless networks and the growth of distributed services running over wide-area networks. The development and management of modern distributed applications accessed via wired or wireless networks require distributed algorithms in many layers of the architecture, namely storage, communication, query processing, and so on; this book is about distributed computations.

Six parts make up the book. Part 1 is about distributed graph algorithms, and investigates problems such as spanning tree construction, shortest paths, deadlock detection, articulation point detection, leader election, and navigation over a network, all done in a distributed fashion. In Part 2, the author focuses on the nature of distributed execution, that is, the notion of consistent global state and the notion of logical time, being linear, vector, or matrix time. The two chapters in Part 3 cover distributed mutual exclusion and resource allocation algorithms. In particular, they present concepts relevant to critical sections and deadlocks.

Parts 4 and 5 include two chapters each, and are devoted to higher notions than low-level sending/receiving operations and their properties. These four chapters deal with ordered message delivery, and the detection of the termination criterion of a distribution computation and the detection of distributed deadlocks. Finally, Part 6 is composed of two chapters that investigate the properties of distributed shared memory related to consistency and, in particular, atomic and sequential consistency.

The book does not cover recent advancements in the ad hoc networking field, such as distributed topology control or cluster-head election (related to Part 1 of the book), or advances made in modern concepts of consistency, such as the CAP theorem and eventual consistency (which are related to the last part of the book).

Overall, this book offers balanced coverage of the major topics encountered in courses on modern distributed computations. The text is primarily intended for courses on distributed systems; it can be used for both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. The mathematical formalisms, correctness proofs, and computation complexities, along with the numerous exercises, make the book particularly suitable as a textbook. Pointers to related references will help postgraduate students and practitioners who wish to delve into the details and alternatives to the presented material.

Parts of the book can be used for courses other than distributed systems. For example, the first five chapters could be used in a course related to wireless sensor networks, or the last two chapters could be used in a course on cloud computing.

Overall, this title is an instructive and valuable book that deserves to be studied.

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