Leader election in the browser with Ably

Distributed computing systems often require a single client among peers in a network to coordinate the behavior of all other clients. This pattern is prevalent in video games and file processing systems, where one peer acts as the coordinating node or leader. However, if the coordinating client dies without recovery, the entire system may fall into a "zombie" state. To address this issue, leader election design patterns can be implemented to ensure that another node takes over operations when the current leader leaves. Various methods for implementing leader election include racing to acquire a distributed lock on a shared resource or ranking clients by client IDs. In browser-based peer networks, client ranking is more suitable due to single-threaded architecture and lack of access to shared storage locations. The Ably SDK can be used to implement client ranking in such environments.