Lamport Clock Simulator

What is Lamport Clock?

Lamport Clock is a logical clock used to determine the order of events in a distributed system. It was introduced by Leslie Lamport in 1978[1]. It is not a physical clock but a logical clock that helps to determine the order of events in a distributed system.

Lamport Clocks are used to establish a partial ordering of events in a distributed system. Each process in the system maintains a logical clock that is incremented for each event it generates. When a process sends a message, it includes its logical clock value in the message. When a process receives a message, it updates its logical clock value to be greater than the maximum of its current value and the value in the received message.

[1] Leslie Lamport. 1978. Time, clocks, and the ordering of events in a distributed system. Commun. ACM 21, 7 (July 1978), 558–565. https://doi.org/10.1145/359545.359563

How to use this implementation?

This implementation simulates the operation of the Lamport clock with the CLI.

Setting up the environment

git clone https://github.com/rihib/lamport-clock-simulator.git
cd lamport-clock-simulator
go run main.go 9000
go run main.go 9001 // Open a new terminal
go run main.go 9002 // Open a new terminal

Running the simulation

You can send and receive messages and perform computation events and see how the Lamport Clock value changes each time you do so.

// Terminal 1
% go run main.go 9000
Please type event, c or s: c
Calculate Event Success!!
Time: 1

Please type event, c or s: c
Calculate Event Success!!
Time: 2

Please type event, c or s: s
Please type the destination port: 9001
Sending Event Success!!
Time: 3

Please type event, c or s:

// Terminal 2
% go run main.go 9001
Please type event, c or s:
Message Received!!
Time: 4

Please type event, c or s: