A common example occurs when two people are walking towards each other. They both notice that they will collide if they continue walking straight so they move left or right at the same time causing the same issue in a different location. Both parties have changed their position in the hopes of making progress, but progress is not made as they still cannot pass each other.
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sjoyner
Unlike deadlock, there is some work being done in livelock, but not necessarily useful work. With the car example, in a deadlock situation, none of the cars are moving and instead they're just waiting for another car to move so they can keep moving. In the livelock situation, each car does work by backing up to try to let others go by and then moving forward again, but ultimately like the deadlock situation, none of the cars actually get past the intersection.
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tliao
It seems like livelock results because the parties in a system do not communicate with each other. Each party is individually attempting to fix what would be a deadlock situation by backing off. Because there's a lack of coordination (parties are coordinating the back-off with the other parties), they get into a situation where they each back-off and reattempt at the same time leading to the livelock situation.
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chenc3
Each car could wait for a random amount of time, then live lock can be solved without communication.
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Avesh
Here is another example of livelock that occurs in the physical world:
A common example occurs when two people are walking towards each other. They both notice that they will collide if they continue walking straight so they move left or right at the same time causing the same issue in a different location. Both parties have changed their position in the hopes of making progress, but progress is not made as they still cannot pass each other.
This comment was marked helpful 0 times.
Unlike deadlock, there is some work being done in livelock, but not necessarily useful work. With the car example, in a deadlock situation, none of the cars are moving and instead they're just waiting for another car to move so they can keep moving. In the livelock situation, each car does work by backing up to try to let others go by and then moving forward again, but ultimately like the deadlock situation, none of the cars actually get past the intersection.
This comment was marked helpful 0 times.
It seems like livelock results because the parties in a system do not communicate with each other. Each party is individually attempting to fix what would be a deadlock situation by backing off. Because there's a lack of coordination (parties are coordinating the back-off with the other parties), they get into a situation where they each back-off and reattempt at the same time leading to the livelock situation.
This comment was marked helpful 0 times.
Each car could wait for a random amount of time, then live lock can be solved without communication.
This comment was marked helpful 0 times.
Here is another example of livelock that occurs in the physical world:
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