On the Correctness of Goscinski's Algorithm

In this paper, the correctness of the mutual exclusion algorithm proposed by Goscinski (J. Parallel Distribut. Comput.9(7), 77-82 (1990)), hereafter G, is discussed and its features are compared with other token-based algorithms already published. In particular, we show that G works correctly only using a communication system that guarantees a total ordering of messages, otherwise it is incorrect. We further give a modified version of G, hereafter BCC, and show that BCC is actually a simple modification of the Suzuki-Kasami algorithm (ACM Trans. Comput. Systems3(5), 344-349 (1985)).