Contents

Basic view

Figure 7: Basic view of experiment Broadcast with ACK 

The basic view shows the communication graph of the network. By default all processes are shown as yellow circles. As the animation proceeds processes will change their colour according to their state:

• A process in sleeping state i.e. it has not started running the algorithm is coloured yellow.
• The initiator of the algorithm is coloured red.
• A process which has received some broadcast messages, but still waits for acknowledgements is coloured green.
• A process which has received all acknowledgements is coloured blue.

With each process a unique identifier is associated in order to help the user recognize this node in other views.

Links usually appear as black polylines, but will change their appearance when a link is determined as a spanning tree edge. These are edges on which a process received its first broadcast message. The link will change its shape into a red arrow which points from sender to receiver of the accordant broadcast message. At the end of the animation the user can see a complete spanning tree and observe the longest path from initiator to any other process. This determines the worst case execution time.

Messages are shown by arrows which point from sender to receiver. As long as a message is transmitted the respective arrow is continuously changing its size along the link connecting sender and receiver of the message. Broadcast messages are coloured green while acknowledgement messages are coloured blue. If two messages, a broadcast message and an acknowledgement message, are sent along the link at the same time the arrow, representing these messages, will start flashing between green and blue.

2002-11-11