roundrobin

Roundrobin, often written as round-robin or round robin, refers to a method of organizing a sequence so that participants, tasks, or requests are served in a fixed, cyclic order. The idea is to distribute opportunities evenly by rotating through items in turn, ensuring each one receives attention in turn and reducing the chance of long waits or favoritism.

In computing, round-robin scheduling is a simple CPU scheduling algorithm. Each process in the ready queue is given a fixed time quantum or time slice. If the process uses up its quantum, it is preempted and moved to the back of the queue; when the queue cycles back to it, it runs again. This approach is fair and predictable and works well for a mix of processes, but it can incur context-switching overhead and may not be optimal for interactive tasks unless the quantum is chosen carefully.

Round-robin is also used in networking and load distribution. DNS round-robin distributes client requests across multiple identical servers by returning multiple IP addresses in rotation, so successive clients tend to connect to different servers. While simple and scalable, it does not account for real-time server load or health, which can lead to uneven performance if some servers are slower or down. More sophisticated load-balancing schemes may supplement or replace DNS round-robin in such cases.

In sports and competitions, a round-robin tournament format requires each contestant to play every other contestant. This format emphasizes fairness and comprehensive evaluation but can be time-consuming for large groups, sometimes necessitating scheduling optimizations and tie-breaking rules. Overall, roundrobin remains a foundational approach in both computer systems and organizational contexts where equal treatment and orderly progression are desired.